

Activity is not Progress - edw519
http://muckandbrass.com/web/display/~cemerick/2009/10/08/Activity+is+not+Progress+%28or%2C+%27Did+you+really+need+to+shave+that+yak%27%29

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futuremint
This seems to be to be a post light on content with a link to the author's
product.

In summary, "Be aware of what you're working on, don't shave yaks, and here is
a link to buy our stuff!"

~~~
cemerick
I'm pretty sure I wasn't trying to pitch anything. I just thought I'd share a
(sadly) typical story, one of which happened to prompt me to write the light-
on-content post to begin with.

~~~
futuremint
I guess I just felt that way after reading the anecdote of developers writing
their own PDF parser, and then giving up and purchasing yours. Though I'm sure
it is evidence directly from your experience, it just feels a little salesman-
ish to me :)

I think the article could be stronger with a few more thoughtful paragraphs on
your thoughts, and maybe removing the link (though keeping the name) to your
product?

~~~
10ren
That they purchased his product makes sense, because that's how he heard about
it. His product acts like a funnel for such stories.

However, I agree it's a little too _conveniently_ self-serving. Although an
appealingly elegant coincidence, it's important to not only be neutral, but
also to appear to be neutral.

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efsavage
I'm guessing anyone who has worked with "Enterprise" development teams has far
better examples than the one mentioned.

As for five whys, it's a valuable and useful exercise, but the reality is that
you often need to fix the symptom first.

In other news:

experience != skill

education != understanding

maximized != improved

responsible != reliable

~~~
cemerick
Yeah, I'm positive there are better examples...the 'fable' I described is just
a recurring theme for us, only because we're often called when things have run
off the rails.

Presumably, if we thought more about why we're doing something and whether
it's really advancing our position, we might not have to do five whys (or
other flavours of RCA) as much.

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wallflower
I think it easy to confuse activity with results-producing activity (e.g.
productivity) which is why having a mentor or even personal coach (someone who
is not biased) can help.

~~~
Ixiaus
That's an interesting line if discussion, actually. What are _results_ anyway?
What is activity and what is productive activity?

Activity is a given even in the case of the body being paralyzed the mind is
still active. So how do you define what meaningful or productive activity is?
Results are also just another step in the activity chain, as a result will
lead to yet another set of activities &c...

Firstly, death is characterized by _in-activity_ ; so you can't say that
checking your friend's status on Facebook is in-active; managers would just
call it irrelevant result producing activity (unless you were collaborating
through FB or something).

Results are a subjective value based judgement - to the manager, writing a PDF
library was a waste of time and didn't produce any usable results. To the
programmer (most likely) it produced knowledge, a useful framework for honing
skills, and a refinement in the ability to discern between what sounds like
fun to work on and what feels like a waste of time.

Since _results_ are based on a subjective value judgement, I could say that
the author of the article engaged in yak-shaving when he wrote that article:
how many articles are out there that could be linked to or paraphrased that
address the same fundamental topic of efficiency and not reinventing the
wheel?

However, from the author's point of view, the article was a solid result from
the activity of writing and thinking; he gets to rehash a common topic in the
context of his own software, thereby capturing the programming audience and
feeding indirect and subtle marketing of his software as a byproduct of the
article itself.

I think it is a useless personal exercise to attempt at determining whether I
am yak-shaving or producing since all that really matters is that:

a) the world doesn't _need_ anything (from humans)

b) the point of life is to enjoy whatever activity it is you are engaged in
and,

c) to stop yak-shaving by writing this comment :)

~~~
wallflower
> the point of life is to enjoy whatever activity it is you are engaged in

I think sometimes we get so involved in thinking about what we are not doing
that we lose some enjoyment of whatever we are doing. That, and great
expectations lead to great disappointment but doing something with realistic
expectations but great enthusiasm can really make your day.

------
tricky
Never confuse movement with action. \- Ernest Hemingway

~~~
shaddi
Stole the words from my mouth (er, fingers?). I love this motivational on this
quote:
[http://content.artofmanliness.com/uploads/2009/08/hemingmoac...](http://content.artofmanliness.com/uploads/2009/08/hemingmoaction.jpg)

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justinhj
Blog posts are not Advertisements (usually)

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kiba
Yak shaving? That's a new term for me.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
It generally means "apparently useless activity which, by allowing you to
overcome intermediate difficulties, allows you to solve a larger problem." --
definition taken from Wiktionary (which claims the etymology comes from a Ren
& Stimpy episode).

<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/yak_shaving>

But in this case the blogger seems to be misusing it to describe needless
wheel re-invention by corporate IT programmers who could either have used an
open source solution or bought in the tool that the blog post advertises to
solve the problem. I wouldn't use the term in such cases.

More accurate usage of the term would be finding yourself updating your entire
system to support some obscure dependancy of the open source PDF library you
decide to install, or spending time trying to get a software purchase
authorized via your office bureaucracy.

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Mz
I think I do quite well at "root objective analysis". But I was hoping to see
some tips that might help me hone that skill. I really didn't see that. An
anecdote about the yak shaving that brought people to your product really
doesn't provide any instruction in how to effectively engage in "root
objective analysis" -- other than, as some folks here have noted, to suggest
the solution is "buy my product".

