The first post in my series on financial musings starts simple: the importance of putting things on autopilot.

Disclaimer: these are my own thoughts, not official financial advice. If you choose to copy my processes or suggestions, you do so at your own risk. I’m not responsible for your gains or losses 🙂

Years ago, as a manager, I learned that to scale you need small but effective processes your team (or you) can run without constant thought. At Amazon, they called these “mechanisms.” In plain terms, they’re repeatable actions that don’t depend on memory, time, or willpower—and are often easy to delegate.

The key to making these mechanisms work is keeping them lightweight and durable. If something requires constant tweaking or heavy effort, it won’t stick. That means doing the heavy thinking upfront: define the process, get it on the calendar, and let the schedule take over. Done right, execution requires no thought—and no hesitation (which will matter later).

My first financial autopilot mechanism was saving. Every month, before bills or debt, I set aside money in a savings account (later a brokerage). Sometimes it was tiny, but I never skipped. Today, automatic transfers make this even easier—you don’t have to do anything beyond checking it’s happening. That’s delegation at its finest.

That’s it for now: a small, simple (and maybe obvious) first step in building a financial autopilot.

Good luck!

–Gary