Constant firefighting because you engineered a pile of shit also takes time and mental energy.
You are describing worst of both worlds - systems engineering, done poorly. I find good abstractions to be almost maintenance-free.
Only if you let it. None of that is your problem - just consume the task queue.
Unless of course you're in a leadership role, in which case it's going to be priority #1,000 in 99.9% of cases.
Different environments require different tradeoffs. The vast majority of startups will die before their systems engineering becomes a problem.