A comment came talking about having a weekly automatic withdrawal from their bank that would then be put straight into a diversified investment portfolio.
An automatic withdrawal was taken from our accounts every single week and put in a diversified portfolio. It was tough at first but eventually became nothing more than another bill to pay.
The key point of the comment was that while at first it was hard, it soon became just another bill to pay and that not long after, they were looking for ways to add more to the fund. This automation is important in my opinion as it means that each week, they didn't have to find the money to invest, it was already gone and this serves a key factor and benefit of automation - they don't have to keep re-buying their decision.
Part of the problem that we have when it comes to investment and things like giving to charity, is that we generally make manual decisions as to when we will act - this requires having to be sold on the idea each time and this in itself sets up a hurdle to doing what we might want to do - it means having to be reconvinced each time and that generally requires some level of work, making it a chore. On top of this, we as humans like to see progress and advancement, but aren't very good at understanding how long something takes to improve or see returns.
When it comes to something like investing manually, this can example mean that each week, we have to make the decision to invest our funds which comes with an opportunity cost of where else it could go. The problem is, the investment takes a significant time to grow and see a return, whereas some of the other opportunities to spend have an immediate feedback. We tend to favor the present over the future in this regard and without significant willpower, we will probably favor the short-term feedback loop over the long-term returns.
This is an obvious problem in regards to investing as long-term will on average see far greater and more stable gains than the short-term - with the long view of expenditure opportunity generally being appreciating, while the short term view is depreciating in terms of the potential for value creation. This results in us spending more of our disposable income on consumptive items, over generative.
It is similar with giving to charities, where a person might want to support, but when having to continually make the manual decision to do so, leaves themselves open to find more reasons not to. Having an automatic direct debit go to the charity of choice means not needing to be convinced that the charity is worth it. One can do the due diligence, make the decision to support and then, automate the process. Of course, it is good to check in from time to time and make the decision again, but this doesn't need to be done weekly or monthly. If after inspection the support needs to be removed, the automation can be stopped.
Obviously on Hive it is easy to see that there is plenty of automation in the voting habits, but does it mean that it is insensitive to what it is voting upon? For example, I have automated my support for 
This can be similar for accounts who automate their voting on authors also, where especially some large accounts are far better off finding an author they want to support for some reason (e.g. content type, quality, engagement, interest, attention) and automate so they don't have to read every post and decide each time. Some don't like this of course, but if you consider that there are some accounts that could distribute 50x $10 votes a day, it is nearly impossible for them to continually find, read and buy-in enough to vote.
Leaving their stake unused makes them feel like they are missing out, so it is likely better to automate some of their voting so that they don't feel the need to use it in other ways. On top of this, if the author is getting decent engagement on their posts, the author feels like they have a patron who supports their efforts to build the platform. Like it or not, the platform needs some consistent earners who can deliver something of value often enough to build an audience, as it is this that keeps people engaged and using the platform as both content creators and consumers.
However, I don't think this kind of vote automation is beneficial for everyone, as those with smaller stakes are likely far better off concentrating their attention and finding and contributing to a narrower set of the community to target authors they enjoy with their votes, and communities and sub-communities that enjoy their type of content.
Building a large following and mass appeal doesn't happen through providing for everyone, it is by creating a small set of loyal followers who appreciate what you do, because it is what they appreciate. In time, the audience spreads wider to include more and often, the content spreads also, and with a larger following and audience, it is more readily accepted too.
What I think is that often our intuitions about the way the world works, holds us back from doing what we actually want to do. We believe that we are aware enough to make all the decisions we want to make, but we live in a continual stream of attention grabbing circumstances that draw us away from being attentive to making decisions for our future, and instead make them by default - which for most of us is to favor the short-term gains - which are usually negative in their return.
The other benefit of automation is that it gives us some relatively steady data over time so that we are better able to evaluate our positions. This gives us insight into what went right and wrong with a higher level of accuracy so that when we are better equipped for when we make our decision for the long term view again. This can lead to large changes in the beginning stages that become more refined through the experience and feedback we gather each round.
The last benefit of automating some decisions I will mention is going back to the opportunity cost of investing. When we invest our time and energy into a decision, we are hoping that we are making a good choice, but that time and energy spent we can't get back. If we have to keep making the same decision over and over, we are taking that time and energy away from other opportunities, for example finding new ways to grow ourselves in factors that are important to us.
Each day, we only have so much attention to pay our experience and if we have to continually keep making the same decisions, we are unable to expand our experience into other areas, unable to progress down the paths we might want to take - if we had the time, money and energy. In some way it is like the statement,
"I told you I love you once, if anything changes, I'll let you know"
If we continually need to check if what we did yesterday is still valid, it doesn't give us much opportunity to work for tomorrow.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]