Will you spend your life shaving yaks?

I absolutely love this illustration about real accomplishment versus procrastination and lack of productivity.

A yak shaver is a person, who upon deciding something needs to be done, finds a number of other steps that must be accomplished before the original task can be completed.

Here is an example from Seth:
“I want to wax the car today.”

“Oops, the hose is still broken from the winter. I’ll need to buy a new one at Home Depot.”

“But Home Depot is on the other side of the Tappan Zee bridge and getting there without my EZPass is miserable because of the tolls.”

“But, wait! I could borrow my neighbor’s EZPass…”

“Bob won’t lend me his EZPass until I return the mooshi pillow my son borrowed, though.”

“And we haven’t returned it because some of the stuffing fell out and we need to get some yak hair to restuff it.”

And the next thing you know, you’re at the zoo, shaving a yak, all so you can wax your car.

We all find ourselves wrapped up in such a situation every now and again.

The key is to notice it early on and do your best with what time and resources you already have. It’s better to do a good job today than a perfect job in a month.

I’d rather accomplish twelve tasks at a “7” than one at a “10”.