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,
> 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.
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 :)