A while back, I was coaching a client named Ilias. He'd built what looked like a really solid investment research workflow.
YouTube video drops from one of his favorite creators. He watches it. Opens NotebookLM, imports the transcript, exports a summary. Pastes that into ChatGPT with a custom prompt. Gets back a structured breakdown tailored to his investment framework.
Five steps. Probably 10-15 minutes total. A genuinely good system.
For the first few weeks, it worked great. He was processing two or three videos a day.
Then things started slipping.
“In the beginning, I was really excited about this process,” he told me. “But then it kind of started becoming monotonous. And especially if I was watching a video in the evening, after 8 PM where I usually don't like getting on my computer anymore, I was less willing to hop on the computer and go through this manual process.”
He was skipping more than he was doing it. The workflow was intact. The habit was dead.
The Real Problem Isn't Discipline
When a habit falls apart like this, most people's instinct is to blame themselves. I need to be more consistent. I need to be more disciplined. I just need to do it.
But that's the wrong diagnosis.
What Ilias had was a task-energy mismatch. The task was fine. The energy level it required wasn't matching the energy available when he actually wanted to do it.
Here's the pattern I see constantly: people design habits for their best-case self. The version of them that's fresh, motivated, and sitting at their desk at 9am. But habits have to work for their worst-case self, too. The version that's drained at 8:45pm and just wants to decompress.
Every step in a workflow is a decision point. And at low energy, every decision point is an exit ramp.
Five steps sounds manageable. But after a long day, five steps can feel like fifty.
The Friction Audit
Before you overhaul a habit or give up on it entirely, do what I call a friction audit. Just count the steps.
Open your laptop. Open app A. Export file. Switch to app B. Paste content. Run the process. Get the output.
Write them all down. Now ask: which of these steps could disappear?
Not “which steps could I do faster.” Which ones could just not exist.
This is the core idea behind what we call the Automation Spectrum at Asian Efficiency. You have life automation (routines, recurring decisions), digital automation (templates, shortcuts, filters), and AI automation (review, synthesis, drafting). The goal is to automate as much of the backstage work as possible so the front stage… the actual thinking, the insight, the decision… can happen without friction.
Ilias's workflow had a lot of backstage steps that didn't need to be manual.
How We Fixed It
We rebuilt his YouTube research system so it runs automatically.
When a new video drops from one of his tracked creators, Lindy picks it up, transcribes it, runs it through a custom summarization prompt tailored to his investment criteria, and posts the result directly to a Slack channel he already checks.
Nothing for Ilias to open. No copy-paste. No switching apps.
The summary just appears in Slack. Where he already is. Whether it's 9am or 9pm.
He went from skipping the workflow most evenings to checking the Slack channel daily. Same information. Different experience.
The habit didn't change. The friction did.
The Thing Most People Miss
Here's what I find interesting about this pattern. Ilias had great intentions. He'd put real thought into building a good system. The prompts were solid. The output was useful.
But the workflow was designed like it was going to run in a laboratory… controlled conditions, fresh energy, no competing demands on attention.
Real life doesn't work that way.
Sustainable habits don't ask much of you. They're designed to work even when you're tired, distracted, or just don't feel like it. The lower the energy required to do the habit, the more consistent the habit becomes.
This isn't a new idea. But most people applying it are thinking about physical habits… putting your gym shoes by the door, keeping the healthy food at eye level in the fridge. The same principle applies to digital workflows.
If your habit requires navigating multiple tools, copying and pasting, or any sequence of manual steps… it's fragile. It will work when you're motivated. It will break when you're not.
Start Here
Pick one habit or workflow you care about that you're inconsistently doing. Write down every step it currently requires.
Now circle the ones that could be automated or eliminated.
You probably don't need to rebuild the whole thing. Usually there's one step causing most of the friction. Fix that one first.
The goal isn't a perfect system. It's a system you'll actually use on a Tuesday night when you're running on empty.
That's the version worth building.
Want to learn how to build workflows like this? Check out the 25X Productivity System — it covers how to design systems that run even when your motivation doesn't.
