"yak shaving" meaning in English

{
  "etymology_text": "Coined by Carlin Vieri in his time at the MIT AI Lab (1993–1998) after viewing a segment at the end of a 1991 episode of The Ren and Stimpy Show. The segment featured “Yak Shaving Day,” a Christmas-like Holiday where participants hang diapers instead of stockings, stuff rubber boots with coleslaw, and watch for the shaven yak to float by in his enchanted canoe.",
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  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
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          "text": "I was doing a bit of yak shaving this morning, and it looks like it might have paid off.",
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        "Any apparently useless activity which, by allowing one to overcome intermediate difficulties, allows one to solve a larger problem."
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      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "I looked at a reference manual for my car just to answer one question, but I spent the whole afternoon with my nose buried in it, just yak shaving, and got no work done on the car itself.",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "text": "For quotations using this term, see Citations:yak shaving."
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A less useful activity done consciously or subconsciously to procrastinate about a larger but more useful task."
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      "related": [
        {
          "_dis1": "43 57",
          "word": "bikeshedding"
        },
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          "_dis1": "43 57",
          "word": "when you're up to your neck in alligators, it's hard to remember that your initial objective was to drain the swamp"
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        "uncountable"
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    "John Kricfalusi",
    "The Ren & Stimpy Show",
    "Vincent Waller"
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  "etymology_text": "Coined by Carlin Vieri in his time at the MIT AI Lab (1993–1998) after viewing a segment at the end of a 1991 episode of The Ren and Stimpy Show. The segment featured “Yak Shaving Day,” a Christmas-like Holiday where participants hang diapers instead of stockings, stuff rubber boots with coleslaw, and watch for the shaven yak to float by in his enchanted canoe.",
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  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "bikeshedding"
    },
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      "word": "when you're up to your neck in alligators, it's hard to remember that your initial objective was to drain the swamp"
    }
  ],
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        {
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      ],
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        "Any apparently useless activity which, by allowing one to overcome intermediate difficulties, allows one to solve a larger problem."
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          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "text": "For quotations using this term, see Citations:yak shaving."
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  "word": "yak shaving"
}