Sleep: The Most Important Task

It’s something that is often overlooked

The Pyramid of Luxuries

The Bespoke - $4,000 Vacation + $1,000 VISA eGift Card

The Ultra High End - Atlas Coffee Club

The Superpremium - Christmas in Germany

The Premium Core - First Aid Kit

The Accessible Core - Sleep: The Most Important Task

The Affordable Luxury - Prompt Ideas

The Everyday Luxury - Referral Issue

The Bespoke

Click on the banner to enter The Bespoke Photo Contest. Click here for the Official Contest Rules.

• Prize: $4,000 Vacation Voucher + $1,000 in VISA eGift Cards [ARV $5,012]

• Odds: For every 660 Ducky Tran premium member by the time of judging, I will give out one (1) vacation bundle Prize

• Contest Period: February 28, 2024 at 10 AM CST to April 5, 2024 at 10 PM CST

See Issue 1 for more content about The Bespoke Prize.

The Ultra High End

Previous Contest Winner

The winner for Issue 15 is DANNY from Arlington, Texas!

Congratulations! He won 3 tickets to Candlelight: A Tribute to Taylor Swift. This is his submission for “a picture from the perspective of a crawling infant”:

Congratulations to DANNY! You won twice in 3 weeks! That baby is raking in the prizes for you.

Reminder to all submissions: I didn’t disqualify anyone this week but some photos were skirting a fine line of following the prompt. Please try to stay accurate to the prompt.

For example, a crawling baby should be grounded somehow and the picture shouldn’t be from 3ft+ in the air. Or picture shouldn’t have adult fingers on the edge of the frame (on camera lens).

This Week’s Contest

Click on the banner to enter The Ultra High End Photo Contest. Click here for the Official Contest Rules.

• Prize: 6-month Subscription to Atlas Coffee Club [ARV $99]

• Odds: For every 70 Ducky Tran premium members by the time of judging, I will give out one Atlas 6-month subscription

• Contest Period: March 6, 2024 at 10 AM CST to March 12, 2024 at 10 PM CST

I know many Ducky Tran members are coffee lovers! Some of you brew coffee every morning or have a fancy espresso machine ready to make you a double shot every afternoon. Regardless of the style of coffee you drink, if you like to brew, press or grind your own coffee, Atlas is here for you.

Atlas allows you to experience different coffee styles from around the world. They use a Q&A format to find your preference and styles so that your coffee is tailored to you. By tasting different coffees from different regions, you’ll discover if your daily brew truly is your favorite but also up your coffee game and knowledge.

The great thing about this subscription is even if you don’t drink coffee, everyone knows someone that does and it’ll make a great gift to that lucky friend!

The Superpremium

This week’s Superpremium topic is Christmas in Germany. My love for travel and experience in the United States Air Force has brought me to many countries around the world.

One of my favorite places is Germany, specifically Southwest Germany in the area between Ramstein Air Base, Frankfurt and Stuttgart. Nearly a decade ago I spent the entire month of December on vacation in this area, and it changed my life and perspective of holidays.

I can’t speak for all of Germany, but this specific area was extremely clean. Unlike other European countries I’ve been to, Germany neighborhoods (known as villages in Germany), streets and city centers were always well-maintained even though the structures were old. But this wasn’t the most amazing part of my vacation.

The first weekend my hosts and I went out to the village center and I saw many lit vendor stalls in rows. It was so surprising to see other people celebrating the holidays earlier than Americans normally do. There were homemade crafts, small eats and Glühwein, or mulled wine (hot, spiced wine). As we huddle up to stay warm, we shared tales with random strangers that stood nearby. It was an experience I thought I would only get to experience once.

I was wrong. Every village for the first few weekends has their own Christmas market and we would hop from village to village enjoying the different Glühwein and village-specific eats. As it got closer to Christmas, the villages were open daily and I was just in awe how I thought the Christmas season in the United States was over-the-top.

But the celebration in Germany didn’t feel commercialized or repetitive, every market had something different and every night felt like a get together with friends and neighbors. The comradery of the people that attended these Christmas markets made you want to come out every night to be around the joy and festivities. You would think I have marvelous photos from this entire month of vacationing, but honestly, I was just living in the moment and enjoying the company that I never even thought about taking pictures.

I’ve traveled around the world and never forget to take pictures from my visits, but when I was in Germany, my life was so connected to the people and festivities that I don’t remember ever bringing my phone out. I know it’s hard to imagine my experience from these few paragraphs of words, but all I have to say is that Germans… they do Christmas right.

The Premium Core

This week’s Premium Core topic is a First Aid Kit. One of the main components of physical wealth is personal safety. Most of the time we don’t really expect to be injured so we don’t really prepare for accidents. However, as a father of four and being injury-prone, I stock up on all the first aid essentials.

To help those that aren’t prepared or have not even thought about injuries being a possibility, I’m here to assist. You don’t want to wait until you get a splinter or a burn to find a first aid kit.

This week I found an extremely comprehensive kit only that has everything that you could want except for the hospital staff. Here’s the deal:

Deal #1: I am offering a $20.58 First Aid Kit for only $5! It will be available at shop.duckytran.com, but there will only be 10 available so get yours soon!

For those that don’t have family or isn’t as injury-prone as I am, let me give you some examples where a kit has been or would have been useful:

1. Camping, small burns from S’more-making

2. Cruising, scraps on rocks when going to the beach

3. Hiking, jammed finger (it’s a long story)

4. Cooking, nicked my finger while cutting veggies

5. Sitting, that’s right, just sitting there in the office until someone runs you over (you never know when this can happen, but it will, if you’re me)

The Accessible Core

Sleep: The Most Important Task

We all know sleep is important to our physical health and I have written about sleep in a few issues already, but today sleep will be the main topic.

There’s a good reason I titled it “The Most Important Task” because you may have heard, “you should sleep and wake up naturally” and “don’t use an alarm”. These phrases have great intentions; however, it hasn’t caught up with modern sleep studies and can mislead some people to do what many people didn’t know is possible, oversleeping.

When you get the right amount of sleep each night, and not playing catch up, your body will intuitively will sleep and wake up at specific times; however, this with the assumption that you are a healthy person. What if you’re living a healthy lifestyle? Well, this is where the problem comes in, straying from a set scheduled sleep routine, waking up and going to sleep around the same time each day can exaggerate any existing health conditions or cause new conditions to arise.

In this study, researchers have linked the relationship before sleep deprivation to conditions such as cardiovascular diseases, hypertension, diabetes and even impaired immune functioning. And in this study, oversleeping has been linked to psychiatric diseases and higher BMI. Like they say, too little or too much of anything can be harmful.

There have been many studies about how if you become sleep deprived that it is difficult or impossible to “catch up on sleep.” Sometimes people sleep their entire weekend off trying to catch up on missed sleep during the weekdays. However, I’m here to tell you that is generally detrimental and not actually producing the results that you want. Even though you may feel rested for a single day, the scattered sleep routine can impact your future restfulness.

I will list a few ways to help you in different sleep scenarios so that you can improve your restfulness in the long run:

1. Maintain a sleep routine as closely and as religiously as possible, this is the basis of being consistent with feeling restful in the long run. It will help improve your physical health, which in turn will help you be less tired during the day and then helps with your sleep routine. It’s a self-feeding loop.

2. I missed 1-2 hours of sleep. During the day when you have the chance, take a scheduled and timed 15-30 minute nap. This may not make you feel rested at first, but if this happens more often, the nap will do you wonders. Like I said before, sleep routines, to include midday naps, is a task. If you do it more often, you get better at it.

3. I missed 3-5 hours of sleep. Take the 15-30 minute nap, but also change the pace of activities for the day. Remove yourself from TV and phone usage. Don’t change your sleep routine up, and sleep at the same time and wake up the same time. Again, you will probably still feel tired when you wake up. But your body will be able to adjust after a few times and the sleep will be more restful, especially if you don’t have too much TV and phone visual stimulation to allow your mind to rest.

4. I didn’t sleep at all last night. If you pulled an all-nighter. You can take a 1-2 of the naps mentioned above during the day and still maintain your sleep schedule. You’ll need to reduce your activities for the day but much more and no TV or phone stimulation. When you sleep, you should pass out and the deep sleep you go into should be restorative enough. Make sure you wake up on time so your body doesn’t think it’s normal. If you pull all-nighters often this routine will make your body feel more restful in the same amount of time.

5. I have a sleep routine, but I’m always tired. This is not professional advice, but you may have an underlying sleep disorder. In this study, it was estimated more than 70 million Americans have at least one sleep disorder. So you may need a medical professional to evaluate your condition.

6. I have a sleep routine, I’ve seen a doctor and am cleared, but I’m always tired. This is more common than many may think. Sleep is not the only thing that contributes to restfulness; exercise, food choices, daily activities, cognitive stimulation and your general health also contributes into the feeling of restfulness. Re-evaluate or have a professional evaluate these aspects of your life so you can find the issue and get your energy back.

I know it seems like I’m just saying you need a sleep routine, but I’m not. I’m saying have a sleep routine and treat it like the most important task you do every day. Make sure to wake up on-time, make sure to go to bed on-time and make sure that when you do lose sleep that it doesn’t carry over to another day. Yes, you will lose sleep here and there due to family, events and conditions you have no control over, but when you do, don’t forget if you maintain a routine, you will feel restful sooner, faster and more often.

The Affordable Luxury

Issue 15 Community Poll Results

This last week’s poll was extremely productive and had many more submissions. Thank you for participating as it will only make the community more vibrant!

1. About 75% of members enjoy sports or cardio as a form of exercise with sports being the clear winner. This would make sense because it’s usually more fun to do something with other people and many sports encourage interaction and competition. The competition and teamwork makes working out feel natural and not forced like other exercises.

2. Most of you meal prep to eat healthier. I also like this approach more than counting calories, or avoiding sugars, because it’s proactive rather than reactive. Although, a combination would bring better results, I think not having to figure out what to eat on the fly is what most people try to achieve. Daily, I feel like I spend more time decided what to eat than eating.

3. Looks like a few members had problems getting some of the recent issues. This is uncommon but since there was a major update to all major email service providers in the last month, I have seen a spike of issues. If you don’t receive an issue by Thursday each week, please send an email to [email protected] so I can resend one specifically to you. Thank you for your feedback!

This Week’s Community Poll

The Everyday Luxury

(The referral program is only viewable on the email version of the newsletter.)

This week, I learned about an issue that some referred members may have encountered when initially signing up. Sometimes if the person doesn’t complete the signup immediately after going through the referral link, they would be locked out of their account until I remove them and re-invite them. I’ve reached out to everyone I believe was affected so it can be resolved. If you know of any members or people you have referred having any technical issues, please email [email protected] so I can get it resolved ASAP.

Visit shop.duckytran.com with the weekly password: atlas