A friend calls this "para-productive" work, when it's in moderation; it's not directly helpful towards her task, but it's useful for gearing up and building momentum. If it gets too far into the procrastination side of things, she calls it "psuedo-productive".
(I asked her whether making up these silly phrases is psuedo-productive, or para-productive. She replied that it was "meta-productive". ๐)
Edit: added missing bracket