Some effects of HF21 will start to kick in in a few hours!

Even though HF21 will happen in 7 days and a little over 4 hours at the time of writing this post, some effects of HF21 will kick in as soon as we cross the 7 days threshold.

In theory, it might not even happen if there is not a super majority of witnesses (17 out of 20) supporting it at the time of the hard fork, but I doubt it will be the case or that it would be good to happen this way. Currently 18 out of top 20 witnesses run version 21 of the blockchain, and a bunch of backup witnesses, like you can see in the image below (click for a realtime view):

I assume the next 7 days will be quite confusing to many people, maybe even more than the ones post hard fork.

That's because the rules of HF21 will apply to all posts which haven't reached payout by the time HF21 kicks in. And that means all posts (and comments) for a period of 7 days, starting in about 4 hours.

At the same time, the pending payout you will see on your front ends until we switch to HF21 is based on the existing rules, meaning HF20. Thus, the source of confusion. Most of us will see "normal" pending payouts on posts for the next 7 days, but then, right after the hard fork, an immediate drop of the payout on all your previous 7 days' posts, which is nothing but the effects of HF21 showing up, compared to HF20.

Instead of being angry or disappointed -- adapt! That's what early adopters do!

Some effects of HF21 won't be seen for a while. It takes time for collective behavior to change. I'm actually curious how much it will change.

As for myself, here are a few changes that I'll start implementing right away (or behavior I already changed):

• I already started to curate more manually; that is usually related to tribes curation, but in many cases involves my main account, instead of alts for certain tribes, so I'm used to curate more with this account, thinking about the coming 50% curation after HF21; in fact, if you curate tomorrow (to make it simple), you'll get 50% curation reward after HF21 on Steem, instead of 25% you get now.
• One of the changes in HF21 is that the window of curation is reduced from 15 minutes to 5 minutes, which means I will go through all my automated curation list and make adjustments (or remove some of them)
• I will stop upvoting comments, generally (starting in a few hours). I do this with a heavy heart, because I did upvote most comments on my posts (and elsewhere, on occasions). But with the rules of HF21, my 100% upvote will not go beyond the dust threshold and that would be a waste of my voting power and to the vote receiver, who will not receive any reward. I hope to see this happen soon, to compensate.
• About downvoting, I'm not decided yet how I will proceed going forward; for now I will wait to see the effects after HF21 kicks in. By the way, before HF21 all downvotes cost voting power on Steem, so don't think it's the same thing as with curation and post rewards!
• I will not panic, regardless of what will happen during the hardfork or immediately after! Good advice, among other good ones, from @tarazkp! :)

Anything else you plan to do these 7 days and the first few days after HF21? Do share please!