Treasonous Trees
Trees are parasitic bachelors. Each marriage ring adds another year to its life.
How do I write so many Duckstacks? They say I have a “Duckstack Thumb”
I want you to focus. Close your eyes to read if you must, or dunk your head in cold water. I want you to do what is required of you. Are you focusing? Are you sure? Then what’s that to your right? Made you look.
Duckstack Cooking: Gumption
Getting things Duckstacked1
I explained last week about how to achieve excellence, but to be truthful a lot of us struggle with mediocrity which should probably be handled as well. Our modern age of convenience has atrophied our focus muscles, so I want to help you build them back. But before we get to the recipe, lets lay out some principles:
One of the tricks to focus is to make things more valuable to you. Most people with ADHD and such never have issues focusing… On things they like. I remember that was an old Matt Walsh bit, “your kid doesn’t have ADHD he’s just a guy” like “oh wow, you have difficulty focusing on horrendously boring subjects that don’t interest you?” but this is what I’m saying, you do choose your interests, they are called “acquired tastes2”.
Instead of trying to artificially make yourself focus on stuff you hate, why not work with what you like instead? “Go with the grain” as it were. Addicts will experience this. Because the point isn’t that weed or meth is bad for you or whatever- they know that already. The point is that you wouldn’t like it if it didn’t reliably fill a real need in your life. This isn’t to say quitting opioids or heroin is like, “just stop having stuff that makes you stressed happen to you!” lol. But nearly everyone who quits smoking does it with some element of substitution- nicotine gum for the habit. Exercise for the relaxation. Mints for the oral fixation. If your copes didn’t “work” they wouldn’t be able to promise anything3.
But I’m not here to teach you how to quit smoking- I’m here to teach you how to do household chores
The problem with “tricks” is you can short circuit them by just forgetting not to use them. The most accurate model is to view everything as momentum: if a ball is already rolling, its a lot easier to push it up a hill. You have hills in your life, don’t you? Go walk up one while you read the rest of this week’s Duckstack. The problem with doing chores isn’t tiring out halfway through doing dishes4: The problem with doing chores is ignition. Starting in the first place. So to mix up some determination, you’ll need to get some ingredients out:
First, you’ll need something to deal with the intimidation. The enormity of the task overwhelms you, and you don’t know where to start, and you are filled with fear that if you start in the wrong place you will miss a crucial bit of engineering, requiring decades at a minimum to correct. We’ve all been there, every time we stand before our dishes-filled sink. So you must trick yourself into believing that a comically small effort is sufficient. Can you not wash one dish5? Okay, so wash one dish, then grab another dish and just stare at it, and you will find yourself washing the dishes. And if the task requires pre-engineering, you should just look at a low cost way to fail, and fail quickly. Because the time lost being intimidated is worse than the cost of failure, and because failure is a very good teacher. Video game development experts tell me this all the time; you should just rush to a prototype rather than trying to build the whole thing so that you can pivot into what's really necessary.
Second, we will need a sense of pride, so go get it out of the pantry. You tell me your sense of pride is fine, otherwise not being able to focus on things wouldn’t bother you so much? Wrong. Your sense of pride is defective and twisted from many years of being used as a human shield against the daily onslaught of todo mosquitos. If you had pride, you would have pride in your work! Some people go weeks or even months without being proud of something they worked on. Not even a finished product, remember, we’re talking about initiative, we’re talking momentum. You just need to get started. You just need to find a groove that you can comfortably maintain. It is easiest for me to write more Duckstacks after I have already written one6. This also pertains to things like church activity. The simplest way to keep your kids active in church is to have a fire in your bones about it- to inculcate in them a sense of patriotism, "We don't necessarily enjoy this, but we're proud of it." You must do what it takes for this to be true. As Brigham Young taught: Truth is not obeyed because it is true, Truth is obeyed when it is loved. A lot of the stereotypical concept of a “work ethic” is exactly like this. You need some sense of pride in your craftmanship7. Doesn't need to be a lot- just enough to boost yourself slightly when you work.
Third, you need a metric to be accountable to. Metrics can take the form of deadlines (someone is coming over!), numbers (if I don’t do ten dishes tonight I will blow up my house), or social (I must make this place presentable, because I want my imaginary friend who is coming over to not judge me and blow up my house8). Whatever your metric, you can boost its effectiveness by giving it to someone who you will have regular contact with, who will reliably ask you about it. If you're really struggling with something (like smoking) this is the way to break it- You have to do it because you don't want to let your accountability partner down. I don't know if most people mind being accountability buddies, but it is a major help in endeavors like this. In the past, communities were tight enough that you were always just doing chores with other people. It wouldn't have even occurred to them how important the social aspect is! But simulating this artificially works great, you won't even be able to taste the difference, don't worry.
Now that you’ve got your ingredients together, I want you to pour them all in a bowel and beat them. Violently. They say eat your feelings, but you are what you eat, and you don’t want to eat procrastination. So go ahead and beat your feelings. Then stick it in the microwave and just nuke it, because you’re starving and we don’t have time to cook properly here.
Once you’ve got it all together, give it a taste test. If it tastes great, great. If something is still a little off, now is the time to add some seasonings to taste:
Competition: If the social aspect is missing a little something, you can crank it up with competition, which is social salt.
Punishment: If blowing your house up didn’t work, then attach a punishment to failing to meet your metric. Ideally this will be a "eupunishment" that ends up being work on a second task you’ve been procrastinating. As long as you have the integrity9 to keep your word to yourself, this can be a valuable motivator. And motivation is one of the primary aspects of faith, without which no man can please God.
Bribery: Not a glutton for punishment? Try bribery! This one simple trick can build your motive muscles by 2-5x instantly! Trainers hate him! Trainers do not want you to have a little candy bar after your exercise as a treat! Don’t let them tell you what to do!
Parallel enjoyment: If you can make a game of something then it doesn’t feel like work, and if I scatter stupid jokes throughout my Duckstack I can write for a lot longer. Most people do this automatically by listening to music, podcasts, and shows while they work. If your task is the type you can wedge them in without detracting from work quality, then you might as well.
Okay, now that the mixture is seasoned, refrigerate it 1 day to set, then eat as needed. Freeze extra, if you want. This is a family dish, and in correct portion sizes should last you for a while.
Thick Air
Hot off the Duckstack Printing Press™10
You have heard of things being fabricated from thin air, but that’s not how we do it around here. We print things from thick air. The air is so thick that it just sort of oozes into being, squished between so much thick air that it just orange juices onto the ground, which we have covered in Duckstack™ brand Duckstack™ buckets. Once collected, we pour the buckets onto the Duckstack, to give The Duckstack its characteristic vibrancy. The Duckstack is extremely slippery and the stuff slips right off so every week we have to apply a new coat, but this lends it a living quality, like its “constantly evolving”, and we like the flavor of that, so we intend to keep this up indefinitely.
HISTORY
Proud of my little boys
Got out of the bathroom to find the kid pouring paint on the floor. “What are you doing!” we exclaimed. “I though it was a good idea… but now you’re mad at me!” It was some realtime processing, let me tell you. Then after giving it some real hard thought, he continued: “The floor was too brown, and I like blue!” and my wife was like crying like you’re supposed to be in trouble kid stop making me laugh. And then he kept thinking, and after more minutes arrived at his final destination: “…maybe I didn’t know any better, like my little brother.11”
The kid broke his foot this week, which was painful, though he didn’t act like it was, because he tells us “I like papa to carry me sometimes”, so it is really more of an excuse for him to lead a life of luxury
Shopping: “Lets see… We probably need to get some more baby wipes, because we're almost out of baby wipes…” and then the kid interjected: “And BOY wipes! Because I'm a boy!” Well we stand corrected. He’s potty training though so we haven’t actually applied baby wipes to him in like a month
The toddler has learned that he can improve his foraging metrics by 600% or more by climbing on the chairs next to the table when he’s looking for food, which has also increased his mess-making aptitude by 300%. This boy is management material.
I do, and have, manually applied these principles each time I have written a Duckstack newsletter, every Tuesday night, for a year and a half. I have never missed a week, which is 99th percentile consistency compared to neighboring Duckstacks. What’s my secret? Am I superhuman? Do I have an army of ghostwriters in third world countries I pay $2 per hour to make my articles less racist? No! I’ve just successfully applied the Principles of Duckstack™ (Patent pending) (on my submitting a patent). Which I hadn’t written yet. But now they are. We’re Duckstacking in real time here, and now you can too!
things like beets, fetishes, and dubstep
Marijuana users report chasing their “first high” and it never being as good after that. But they keep relapsing, because “just in case”. Lottery mindset, casinos live for this principle.
If you find yourself frequently falling asleep and drowning to death in soapy dishwater in the middle of doing dishes, I’m afraid I have no advice to offer you at this time.
Some of the brethren come to me and say, “Brother Brigham, is it my duty to pray when I have not one particle of the spirit of prayer in me?” True, at times, men are perplexed and full of care and trouble, their ploughs and other implements are out of order, their animals have strayed and a thousand things perplex them; yet our judgment teaches us that it is our duty to pray, whether we are particularly in the spirit of praying or not. My doctrine is, it is your duty to pray; and when the time for prayer comes, John should say, “This is the place and this is the time to pray; knees bend down upon the floor, and do so at once.” But John said, “I do not want to pray; I do not feel like it.” Knees get down, I say; and down bend the knees, and he begins to think and reflect. Can you say anything? Can you not say, God have mercy on me a sinner? Yes, he can do this, if he can rise up and curse his neighbor for some ill deeds. Now, John, open your mouth and say, Lord, have mercy upon me. “But I do not feel the spirit of prayer.” That does not excuse you, for you know what your duty is (DBY, 45). -Brigham Young
If the Devil says you cannot pray when you are angry, tell him it is none of his business, and pray until that species of insanity is dispelled and serenity is restored to the mind (DBY, 45). -Brigham Young
And now we have like 80, which is a lot of history hanging over my head threatening to kill me if I ever break my promise to myself to publish every week. Fear not, Sisyphus is happy
Another reason self-depricating “I’m never good enough for myself” is satanic and vril draining
Uncommon but not unheard of
“my sense of integrity in keeping my word to myself is failing, I find myself coping and making excuses for myself!” Time to reapply all the principles in this Duckstack to getting a sense of pride in your sense of integrity. Just think: What will you do in the morning if you look in the mirror and your shadow being makes fun of you?
not actually trademarked
This was really silly and adorable, but I am actually really pleased with his metacognition here. That’s something that’s so valuable to me so I’m really proud to see it coming out in him at such a young age.