Abstraction

I think it was in Dreaming in Code that I first came across the term “Shaving the Yak.” The concept has been familiar for a long time, I just didn’t have the words to express it. “Shaving the yak” refers to an focus on tools to accomplish a task instead of actually working on the task itself (e.g. Use this db, or that one? This coding language, or that one, etc.)

Sadly, yak-shaving happens to be one of my all time favorite activities. This is most evident in my book-buying: When I’m interested in a topic, I like to browse and buy books about the topic much more than I do actually learning about the topic.

My house is stuffed to the rafters with books that can serve as a chronology of my various interests over the course of the last decade or so.  You can note the many Dr. Phil books, for example, and, based on their position relative to other books, surmise that I had a fight with my wife sometime in 2001. My penchant for this book-buying has to do with feeling like I’m tackling a subject without actually having to tackle the subject.

For a long time, among my favorite yak-shaving activities had to do with personal productivity. Turns out I’m not alone, either; shaving this yak is so popular it’s got it’s own moniker: productivity prOn. There’s lots and lots and lots of web sites devoted to it, and a book, and many, many gurus. And no geeky blog is complete without a missive devoted to it.

And…I’m over it.  Thing is, my day to day work involves many onerous tasks that I’d really rather not have to do.  I think I subconsciously felt that if I were only to become super-productive, some of these tasks would take care of themselves. It’s akin to buying Quicken to fix an overspending problem.  You install it, feel like you’re making progress, and then realize that the unpleasant not-spending part is still there. (Then, irritated, you go out and buy Microsoft Money instead).

So no more shaving the yak for me.  I’m quitting the habit.  And to prove I’m serious, I’ve found a couple good books on the subject.

High among my (many, many) pet peeves is the bathroom hand-dryer, the wall mounted device that blows a sad little bleat of warm air on your hands, forcing you to either stand around and repeatedly cycle the machine or just give up and smear your hands all over the front of your pants.

Now, reminding me that the potential for a great product is often right in front of you, comes a better hand dryer.

It dries with a slim jet of air moving at 400 miles per hour. The Airblade doesn’t heat the air, so it uses about 80% less electricity than conventional machines. The dryers, which will be launched in the U.S. on June 26, are getting rave reviews from early customers. “Everybody loves them,” says George Denise, general manager for property manager Cushman & Wakefield at Adobe Systems Inc.’s buildings in San Jose, Calif. “They’re high-tech. They’re unique. They work well. And I’d even go so far as to say they’re fun.”

That great products ideas are everywhere, if you only know where to look, reminds me of an aphorism — there is, right now, a tiny company (or just an idea for a company) destined to grow into a billion dollar monster. If you missed your chance as an early employee at Google (or wherever), don’t sweat it; the next Google (or Oracle, or YouTube, or whatever) exists today, right now, somewhere. All you have to do is find it. They’ll hire you, no problem. Also, once you find it, you have to stick with it even when everything is going to hell and you’re sure it’s going to be a miserable failure. Easy, right?

One of the things I love most about living in Silicon Valley is how it celebrates geeks. Everything that is geeky, everything that made high school a miserable experience, is the norm here. It’s embraced. If it happens makes you very rich, it’s even sexy. People that aren’t geeky, or are at least associated with some geeky endeavor, are assumed to be cognitively impaired in some fundamental way. Not in a “you are stupid” way, but in a “you don’t really get it” kind of way.

It’s necessary at this point to admit that every non-geek I know (including my wife) would rush to emphasize that they in no way wish to “get it,” nor do they feel their life is in any way poorer for not “getting it,” and where the hell does a geek get off denigrating another person anyway, for God’s sake, not to mention the many things that geeks “don’t get,” including, all too frequently, personal hygiene and a modicum of conversational ability.

But I digress.

My point, such as it is, is that I just learned about the Tech Shop in Menlo Park. From the Tech Shop home page:

TechShop is a fully-equipped open-access workshop and creative environment that lets you drop in any time and work on your own projects at your own pace. It is like a health club with tools and equipment instead of exercise equipment…or a Kinko’s for geeks.

I think that such a great place could only exist in Silicon Valley. Anyway, kudos to Guy Kawasaki for pointing it out. Very, very cool.