Yak Shaving

yak shay-ving

Definition

The endless chain of tasks you must complete before you can do the one thing you actually set out to do, like needing to shave a yak before deploying your app.

Etymology

From the metaphorical act of doing seemingly unrelated tasks to accomplish a goal.

Usage Example

I wanted to fix a bug, but after three hours of yak shaving through dependencies, I forgot what I was even fixing.