One thing that actually improved my investing this year (and it wasn’t a new strategy)

With the year coming to an end, I’ve been thinking about what actually helped me improve as an investor.

For a long time I thought progress meant better ideas, better ratios, better setups.
In reality, what helped me the most was reducing friction.

I still start from the same place: understanding the business.
How it makes money, where cash really comes from, and what could realistically break it.

What changed this year is how I get there.
I realized I was spending way too much time jumping between tabs, cleaning data, double-checking numbers and not enough time actually thinking.

So I started using a couple of tools to get a quick quantitative snapshot upfront. Nothing fancy, just a sanity check to see if the numbers broadly make sense.
One of them uses AI to highlight patterns and generate rough forecasts. It doesn’t tell me what to buy, but it saves time and mental energy.

Do you prefer doing everything manually, or do you use tools to filter first and then rely on your own judgment? In case which tools do you use?