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AI can make it quicker to start workflows, drafts, and automations—but starting faster is not the same as finishing more. Thanh Pham of Asian Efficiency says he went from 7 half-done projects before AI to 87 afterward. Those are his personal counts, not research findings or a statistic about AI users generally. His experience points to a practical risk: building systems faster than you can understand or complete them.
Why AI can leave you with more unfinished projects
When an AI tool makes it easy to generate a workflow or automation, the friction that once forced you to think through the task can disappear. You may accumulate systems without learning what they require, whether they solve the real problem, or how to maintain them. Pham describes this gap between the systems built and the builder’s understanding as “knowledge debt.” It is his framing, not a formally measured effect.
In his 2026 Asian Efficiency article, Pham sums up his own experience this way: “Faster building did not make me more finished. It made the pile bigger.” The useful lesson is not that AI inevitably creates unfinished work; it is that speed alone does not ensure completion.
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The article does not cite a study or independently verified figure showing that AI causes people to accumulate unfinished projects. Treat the 7-to-87 contrast as one person’s anecdote, and use it as a prompt to examine your own workflow.
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How to decide whether a task is worth automating
Repeat the task manually before building a system
Pham’s rule of thumb is to perform a task manually at least three times before building a workflow or AI automation for it. The number is his heuristic, not a scientifically established threshold. Repetition can make the real steps, exceptions, and roadblocks easier to see—and can reveal that the task is too rare or simple to justify an automation.
- Choose one recurring task you are considering automating.
- Do it manually three more times, noting the steps, decisions, and points where it gets stuck.
- Afterward, decide whether the task repeats consistently enough to systematize and whether the likely time saved is worth building and maintaining the system.
If the task changes each time, or the manual process is already easy, keep it manual for now. If it repeats and its requirements are clear, build only what addresses the recurring work.
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How to avoid planning instead of producing
Make a rough first draft
Do not wait for a perfect prompt, ideal tool, or complete plan before making something usable. Start with an AI-assisted rough draft, then revise it against the actual task. Pham invokes Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird as a reference for the rough-first-draft principle; the book is optional reading, not a prerequisite.
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AI tools may suggest extra steps or follow-up projects. Take those suggestions only when they advance the result you are trying to achieve now. Otherwise, set them aside rather than turning every suggestion into another open project.
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How to keep feeds and saved ideas from becoming another backlog
Digests, meeting transcripts, saved posts, and videos can all become collections that feel productive but do not lead to action. Review the information feeds pushed to you and remove those you do not read. For links or transcripts worth keeping, choose one small idea to test each week instead of adding more items to a passive collection.
A useful experiment should be small enough to complete and easy to assess. For example, try one change to a recurring process, then decide whether it helped before building a larger system around it.
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How to review what you actually finished and learned
Set aside time weekly to inspect your active projects. For each one, note what you completed, what remains open, and what you now understand about the process. Also distinguish work you can explain from work an AI system produced that you have not yet checked or understood.
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Start with a manual review. Pham describes using a Weekly Retrospective automation that creates an HTML artifact, but the article does not establish that this automation is a generally available product or independently validated method. Automate the review only if doing it manually becomes a consistent burden and the automated output helps you make better decisions.
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Choose an output you will actually use
Pham’s article presents Markdown as useful for AI input and HTML as easier for people to scan. That is his stated preference, not a general benchmark. Choose the format that makes your review clear and easy to maintain; the format matters less than whether the review helps you decide what to finish, pause, or drop.
Quick Recap
A simple reset for a growing project pile
- List the unfinished projects and identify which still matter.
- Pick one project with a clear, useful outcome; pause or drop the rest rather than starting another system to manage them.
- For the chosen project, write down the next concrete task and complete it before adding features or related ideas.
- At your next weekly review, record what you finished and what you learned, then choose at most one small new experiment for the coming week.
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