Yak Shaving
irreal.org
irreal.org
1. Any apparently useless activity which, by allowing you to overcome intermediate difficulties, allows you to solve a larger problem. I was doing a bit of yak shaving this morning, and it looks like it might have paid off.
2. A less useful activity done consciously or subconsciously to procrastinate about a larger but more useful task.
I had thought that only definition 1 counted as Yak Shaving but apparently definition 2 is also in common usage.
I would personally find the concept more useful if it only meant definition 1. But that might just be me.
If the series isn't finished because of TEX, I think we'll feel like it was a bad tradeoff. (But I could see others feeling like TEX is is more valuable than volume 11 or whatever of TAOCP).
If working on it is procrastination or actually a better use of your time than solving the original problem is never obvious.
Anyway, I'm on the side that thinks TEX is more valuable than TAOCP.
Luke: Master, moving stones around is one thing. This is totally different.
Yoda: No. No different. Only different in your mind. You must unlearn what you have learned.
Luke: All right, I'll give it a try.
Yoda: No. Try not. Do… or do not. There is no try.
Whether it actually qualifies as Yak Shaving is an expedition I will not go on, but I think you have to go back to the original source (the xkcd comic), and then interpret the "point" of it and so forth. That might be a worthy detour, and you can tell us at the end if it counts as a yak shave.