Steemit has an issue and you can be part of the solution. I’m sure most of everyone noticed it by now. It feels like engagement is down and everyone is voting less. I as well after HF19 was in the same boat. I was greedy and hoarded my voting power because I thought it made me feel happier to give “more.” Sure there are a million and one reasons why voting seems down and everyone is left wondering “what happened to engagement.” There is one thing you can do today to help fix that. But let's first see how I faired in trying out the different tactics everyone spent a while trying research the best method of acting after HF19 hit.

Start of HF19

Like most people I wanted to make sure I was taking full advantage of HF19. I read endless theories on how much voting power you should retain. How much can you vote a day? Why staying at 80% was best. A few things become as a result of this. As you see I’m a minnow and I do not have a vote slider.

• I voted 10 times a day or less
• I often felt bad leaving a comment but not upvoting
• I was so concerned with my voting power I sometimes would sit at 100% for the long amount of time not “finding” something worthy of my 3 or 4 cent upvote.
• I left fewer comments since I felt I could not upvote anymore for the day
• Fewer people upvote what I did
• Fewer people engaged with me
• I thought I was happier giving a 4 cent upvote over a 1 cent
• I spent time every day strategizing over how I was going spend my 10 upvotes for the day.

I was miserable after trying to horde my tiny vote in only voting 10 times a day.I did this for a while just so I could better understand its overall impact on me. Steemit is a social platform after all, and I no longer wanted to be social on it. Lots of people keep talking about “not getting views or upvotes anymore.” Yet when you look them up you see they are sitting at 80%-100% most of the time. So I ask myself is this really working out for me? Am I happy? What can I do to change?

Going back to my old behavior

Before HF19 I upvoted a lot. I didn't care much about my voting power as it matters very little. I was able to engage with an upvote and a comment. I was not spending my days trying map out my upvotes. I was active in certain communities where I could easily upvote 6 or more things in an hour. So I started to upvote like I was before HF19

• I Stop spending too much time thinking about what can I upvote; instead, I just upvoted
• I started to engage in the community again that I was ignoring because I didn't have the upvotes to help out
• I started to upvote more people in need
• I wanted to engage with more people
• I spent more time in my own community

If you don’t like the way HF19 caused you to change; then, go back to the way you were. Yes, your up voting worth will return back to where it was. We regain 20% voting power a day, and the lower your voting power is the slower it drains. So if you go back to voting 40 times a day at 100% then it's just like before the change.

Other things I changed to be happier on Steemit.

Do you know the kind of blogs you are following?