I admit I do not find painting relaxing and I do find it a chore.  But I dont like spending tons of money on painted figures and I actually am proud and happy when I get things actually done.  Right now I am still in process of basing all of those figures I painted.   The ACW project will be done as soon as I paint 30 more bases of Union infantry.   

When the ACW project is done its time to tackle smaller SYW Austrian/prussian armies.  I plan to play a lot of One hour wargames with my kids over the coming months to actually get some playing time in.

Painting little and often is working OK for me. I will have completed 4,000 ancient figures by the weekend. Mixing this up with scenics, a bit of research and rewriting my campaign scenario after a playtesting failure! But I still have another 1,000+ ancients, a few hundred Pony Wars, a handful of fantasy figures and a towns-worth of buildings at various stages still on the painting desk. 

I try to resist the temptation to buy a lead mountain, on average just purchasing 2 packs of 96 Ancients infantry, 1 pack of 48 infantry and 1 pack of cavalry at a time.  I paint in batches of 24 figures and get them fixed to Polemos bases.  Seeing the pile go down and the finished units increasing gives me the motivation I need to keep going.  But there is a strong urge to buy more before I'm finished!

6mm is still fairly new to me , however not wargaming or painting which is something i done in the past, mainly 15mm, and i recall  the thought of ton of unpainted figures always seemed quite daunting, not a problem i intend to make with 6mm.. .. yes it must be nice to buy the 10.000 figures you need for an army , but a huge pile of unpainted lead.sitting there can be very off putting..  I intend to order 3 or 4 packs at a time and only when I have those finished shall i order more, ..... BUT thats just myself knowing how MY mind works,.....

I always say I am going to buy just a few, then order more once the first batch has been painted.  Thats always the plan until I goto the catalog and place my order.  Then all hell breaks lose as I order the mountain hah

Well, can't say I have that problem because painting 1000 figures would take me somewhere around 65-70 hours!  Lol.  The most I've ever been able to knock out in a long weekend is about 250, and I was burnt to a crisp after that.  For me, I've found that 12 strips at a time is my sweet spot.  If I start to get burned out, I try to switch to a fun side project or pick a unique aspect of the time period.  When regular blue and gray ACW started to burn me out, I did some Zouaves or leaders.  Kind of helped keep me in the groove.  
 

I have bought some painted miniatures and then finished off armies myself.  3 feet away I cant really tell the difference but up close is another matter.   I really do not think of myself as a great painter and I am kind of a perfectionist so it takes me being the proper mood to knock out a bunch of figures.  I am just way to hard on myself and it keeps me from picking up a brush sometimes.