Does anybody feel like they’re actually good at maintenance? As in, healthy attitude, motivation, good dopamine loops around stuff like paperwork, chores, boring repairs where you learn nothing new, doctor appointments, code documentation, inbox clearing...

What’s your secret?

I get that some people are driven by a strong sense of duty/responsibility/piety but what if you entirely lack those traits?

I can do some guilt, fear, anxiety, panic, but they don’t seem like healthy ways to stay on top of maintenance work

A good measure of the amount of the non-routine maintenance you have in your life is the number of account numbers and passwords. Routine maintenance (eg. folding laundry) can be made pleasant. Non-routine is much harder.

Any maintenance that requires dealing with an account number/password is by definition a rare or exceptional kind of event, like filing taxes or calling customer service because a thing broke.

You can make it routine by investing in serious personal workflow systems (ie automation) but now you have 2 problems. I think that's why my disciplined GTD-ing from my 30s pretty much broke down in my 40s. Even something as simple as GTD for personal workflow can become too much

Yeah, this by Vaughn is really good. https://twitter.com/context_ing/status/1353435507154276358