As I said, there are means to overcome these maintenance problems; outsourcing the work being just one of them. There seems to be a fair amount of cognitive di

As I said, there are means to overcome these maintenance problems; outsourcing the work being just one of them. There seems to be a fair amount of cognitive dissonance going on here, and it seems to stem from the fact you feel overwhelmed and I am suggesting that more can be done. This dissonance is probably part of why your response is as aggressive as it is. Get off HN and do the customer support. Skip that trip to the bar and get that next bug fixed. I know and am surprised from my own personal experiences at how much time we spend on small unproductive things. Personally, I think they are essential to being happy, but there can be stints where neglecting happiness and relaxation has a greater payoff; where doing the work and getting the customer support done will give you enough cash flow to hire someone to do it for you. There is this little voice in everyone's head, saying that the extra work is too hard, that it'll be better not to stick it through. It's like there is a constant battle with yourself on what level of self-dominion you can achieve; meaning, your ability to actually get yourself to do what you want to do. It's running that 5th mile when you've run 4 and want to call it a day. It's coming home from work and putting in 2-3 hours into your side project when you just want to lay down and watch TV. How hard is it really to dig in and get it done? I say what I do not to be critical of you--I don't know who you are, and I have no conflict with you personally--but because I know how sticky that emotion is. Feeling like that extra work isn't worth my time; I've been there. What it takes is doing small tasks, one at a time, to build momentum. Taking the trash out leads to cleaning your desk, which leads to writing up a short brief about things, and eventually, you're flying through and getting task after task done (not just work-related things) and you are 100% confident in your ability to say, "okay, so today I'm going to do X, Y, and Z," and at the end of the day you will have done those things.