You want a license or certification? Jump through these hoops and it’s yours. Want a college degree? There you go, there are some hoops. Start jumping. So, what does it mean to jump through hoops? Well, in general it means to have to complete a series of, for the most part, meaningless, complicated, or annoying steps to get whatever it is you want. I also include busy-work in this definition—work with relatively little value, designed to simply keep us busy. And if you’ve been on this earth for any amount of time, you know exactly what I’m talking about.