Wow, the documents for the user blocks are very thorough. Here is a fun snippet that (blocked) user sorein sent to the OSM Data Working Group:
"YOU MORON WHO PROMISED T INTERMEDIATE BETWEEN ME AND THE GYPSIES TAKING OVER IN THE ROMANIAN NEWSLETTER, AND THEN YOU JUST RUDELY FORGOT NEED TO STOP!!! GO DO A JOB FOR WHICH YOU ARTE QUALIFIED"
Yak shaving usually refers to work that you started doing because you needed it while working on your actual problem, but the work isn't directly related to that problem's solution.
Interestingly, I'm at that unproductive phase right now. On one hand, I could fix this fast and ugly, but then my code is going to look no different then all the code I go home and complain about. On the other hand, I can try to make my code really nice and abstracted with well thought out design patterns like <golden-coworker>'s. So, on one hand I'm a hypocrite and on the other hand I'm slow and hardly productive because I am just learning design patterns and no matter how many times I refactor my code it never looks as good as <golden-coworkers>'s. How did you get out of this stage? Please help.
This is surely debatable, but the best code is readable by Engineers of Tomorrow with the least amount of effort.
Getting code reviews from other people that understand this, or pair programming with them, is the best way to practice empathy for those future code readers (which very well may be you).
Don't focus on commenting about how. They can read the code for that, and those comments almost always drift from truth. Instead, focus on writing code and comments that describe the why. Consider describing what other approaches you tried, why you didn't use them, and why you went with the current implementation.
This especially applies if your solution may not be the obvious first answer.
Try to help the Engineers of Tomorrow from repeating prior mistakes. Free them up to make new and grander mistakes, instead.
I think that is nice, but may not be aligned with what the company wants. If <golden coworker> is respected, well paid and promoted then by all means try to emulate them. if <golden coworker> is gold plating a lot of small projects that dont really help the business, and hackers are getting rewarded for delivering new functionality that the bosses want, then that route is better.
"YOU MORON WHO PROMISED T INTERMEDIATE BETWEEN ME AND THE GYPSIES TAKING OVER IN THE ROMANIAN NEWSLETTER, AND THEN YOU JUST RUDELY FORGOT NEED TO STOP!!! GO DO A JOB FOR WHICH YOU ARTE QUALIFIED"