This is my weakness. I'll gladly write a script or macro to accomplish a repetitive task even though doing the task by hand would take half the time. Coincidently, this is why I use Vim, because it reduces the distance between manual and macro editing. Of course, it took me weeks to set up and learn to use Vim. That's time I'll likely never recoup.
The multi-axial solution is to delegate your yak-shave. Alternately optimize using the "has somebody automated/done this in a good enough fashion" algorithm.