I'm a bit of a wannabe blade-aphile ("wannabe" in that I know too many guys that put my meager collection to shame, so I'm not in that "club" yet). I'm also a woodworker and leatherworker, so I spend a lot of my life sharpening. My leather cutting round knives and my coon skinners see a lot of aggressive service, but putting the edge back on with a leather strop goes really fast.

I'm not a fan of motorized sharpening systems. For what it's worth, I've never felt that they could speed up my process enough to warrant the cost, and the risk of ruining a good blade outruns the benefit of speed (or lack thereof). Once I put an edge on a blade the first time, which typically takes around 10-15min depending on how rough the factory edge might have been, then putting it back on only takes a minute or two.

To put on an edge, I use 2 or 3 progressively finer wet stones, then strop with a rouge rubbed leather strap. 10min. After that, it's incredibly rare that I'll ever touch a hard stone to the blade again unless I'm REALLY mean to it (like cutting bone).

To resharpen, if I'm really mean to the blade, then I'll go back to the ultrafine stone, otherwise, I just take a few strokes on each side on the strop.

Edge management, for me, is about sharpening more often. The further you get from sharp, the more damage you have to do to the blade to get it back.