With systems and automated processes you gain compounding interest in your investment of time
People are building "sandcastles" over and over again but if you invest the time in building systems instead of just rebuilding the same thing again and again, you will gain Compounding Interest of your invested time.
One big problem in the beginning with building systems is, that the initial investment is higher, then if you just do it "quick and dirty". Hence often when you start-off doing something as a "I just need to get this done" kind of thing, it will come around later and bite you in the back. I see this happen a lot in design, development, business processes and even at home with just stuffing something into "that one drawer", closing it just fast enough for nothing to fall out.
Even though they are sometimes complicated and time-intensive to build and maintain – Systems are still a lot more maintainable, than having small "particles" scattered around and being decoupled from a single source of truth.
For the compounding of interest to happen, we need to get over the "hump" and focus on improving our systems or building new ones. It's also important that you Don't worry about outcomes and focus on inputs instead. Good systems lead to good outcomes automatically. But on the opposite Garbage in, garbage out is also true.
Building systems and (semi-)automated processes has never been easier. Tools like Zapier, Notion, Readwise, Coda and more all have APIs, connecting to each other making it possible to tear down work and knowledge silos and replace repeated processes with systems and automation.