It is absolutely no effort at all. When there are updates, you're told in a notification. Click on it or don't, up to you. You can of course also disable the notification and just manually update whenever you want (or not). Updating can generally be done through that tool, or through a normal GUI application that exists (where you can also install new software), or of course in the terminal if you prefer.
There will be updates basically daily, that's the nature of the rolling distro model. If there's like 5-10, they install in literally 5-10 seconds. If you've gone a month it'll probably take 1-2 minutes. Also just cause there are updates doesn't mean you need to care about it. You should of course update frequently enough that security fixes get applies, but many people just update once a week or once a month or something.