When moving from my laptop to my phone, I just open the settings tray, 3D touch the media control, tap the AirPlay icon and select my AirPods. Sure, that’s still a few taps but your flow is about as roundabout as you can get.
Duly noted and that will certainly help me in the future, but I have to point out that plugging in 3.5mm headphones never required knowledge of a super-secret shortcut. You just simply had to plug them in. And even that takes less time than the 3d-touch-media-tray method.
I do the same thing. Where I think Apple could improve is by helping you understand that you can do it this way. I accidentally figured this out a while back.