Taylor Pearson wrote an excellent primer on blockchain a while ago. While explaining why blockchain matters, he quoted something by Alfred North Whitehead
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It is easy to misconstrue the first sentence when read in isolation, the second is what opens up thought bubbles. If you consider the things we have automated as civilisation progressed, the point is quite valid. In the article’s context, the idea is of automating trust, something I had written about a few weeks ago. But my thoughts were on the applications at an individual and organisational level.
I have automated (to various degrees) quite a few parts of my life – from what I wear daily, to planning in contexts as different as travel and finance – and that has helped create a cognitive surplus that I can use in areas where I think it is better served. Simply put, spending 5 minutes on what to wear today vs thinking deeply on the ideas in the book I am reading. The automation in the former is done by having a set pattern arranged in a certain way in my work-wear shelf. These are habits, and as the famous quote goes – “Watch your words for they become actions. Watch your actions for they become habits. Watch your habits, for they become your character. And watch your character, for it becomes your destiny!” The wrong habits can lead to undesired results.
The organisation’s way of “not thinking” is to set up processes. The danger, as I have written before, is when processes become the end as opposed to the means.
In both cases, I do not see anything wrong with automating the decision making process as long as two conditions are met. One, a conscious thought on what the person/organisation wants to spend thinking time on, and thus, by elimination, arriving at the things to be automated. Two, a periodic review of this decision. Because contexts change, the environment in which one operates changes, competition changes, mindsets change. The definition of happiness/success is bound to change.