THE CHARTER

OF THE

SUPREME COMMAND

Written by

Nathaniel D. Robison

With input from

John T. Rife

INTRODUCTION

Hello Art. It has come to Tyler and I’s attention that the project 's general structure and day-to-day operations need to change. Expectations have been individually set with a common goal in mind between both of us, but it is increasingly clear and obvious that anything other than this message will not paint the picture clearly enough. Before we get into the new ruleset, we want to mention that we will be citing past examples to justify it. These observations and examples are no longer open to interpretation. We have ensured that our analysis of the events accounts for potential bias and skewed the rules in your favor to offset any bias. This is to give you the best possible chance to meet our expectations and goals, which have been crafted around these events.

By the end of this message, if you do not believe you can meet all the requirements, we welcome negotiating restrictions, quantities, process, etc. If we cannot reach an agreement with quantifiable measurements, Tyler and I believe it is in our best interest to request a refund now. It should also be noted that if this message is not acknowledged by you, we will request a refund and escalate to a chargeback if the refund request goes unacknowledged.

IMPLEMENTATION

Agreement, negotiations, and implementation of the terms below shall be implemented within seven (7) days of this document 's publication. Extensions are available, subject to our approval. Strict adherence to these rules is expected on the next Monday after the implementation stage is complete.

16 HOUR WORK WEEK

The first rule we would like to introduce is a fixed number of hours we would like you to work within a seven (7) day week. Over the course of this project, we have expressed our dissatisfaction with the amount of progress and the seeming lack of interest or care you have shown. Your response to our dissatisfaction has been the opposite; you’ve expressed how “this is your biggest project ever” and that you’re “super excited to see it to completion”. As of now, we are no longer judging words or promises, as neither returns results. We will be judging action or lack thereof in a measurable way that we can quantify. The fixed number of hours per week will be set at sixteen (16) hours per week. That can be broken up as you like, as long as the 16 hours are completed by EOD Sunday using Eastern Standard Time (EST).

TIME TRACKING

Much like the Constitution of the United States of America, the second rule is here to enforce the first. This is not set in stone and will require negotiations and testing sessions. It is important that you adhere to this rule, as it is the only way we can accurately track and record your time to ensure you meet our expectations. We would like to propose the following solutions that would help you satisfy this requirement:

• You record your entire work session every day and upload it to Discord, Dropbox, or another file-sharing platform. You will then send us the necessary information to access that video. You will need to record your entire screen, not just the application. This includes your taskbar, Windows Start Menu, and overlapping windows and applications. Recording audio is optional. You are permitted to split your recording into parts, provided they are reasonably continuous.
• You stream your entire work session to one of our servers, and we save the file as it streams to us.

It is important to note that you should not expect time to be counted unless it has been recorded. Recordings will be screened accordingly and in as much detail as required to ensure you meet expectations. Under this system, updates will no longer happen retroactively, and there will be no more uncertainty. Breaks are expected and encouraged, but an overabundance of breaks or their duration will not be counted towards your weekly quota. If you have questions about the limits or have an incomplete understanding, please feel free to ask us questions.

FREEDOMS OF &FREEDOMS FROM

You mentioned that the constant, daily pressure from us ends up being a detriment to your ability to meaningfully contribute to the artwork. It has become the largest symptom both in size and intensity for both of us, and this is what we’ve decided to do about it. We will no longer be pestering you daily, hourly, or crafting new apparatuses to make sure you’re on task.

As the paying customer, it should not be our duty to motivate, regulate, or enforce our expectations with you on an hourly basis. Starting with our mutual agreement on this document:

• You will have freedom from our daily reminders.
• You will have the freedom to manage your own schedule, and not have to answer to us about unexpected events.
• You will have the freedom from ambiguous expectations.
• You will have the freedom to focus on your creativity and your interpretations of our art, without our premature critiques.

“YOU CAN HAVE RESULTS OR EXCUSES. NOT BOTH”

Without sounding out of touch or uninformed, when free time arises in your schedule, suggestions to allocate part of it to our artwork are consistently met with new reasons not to proceed. In the previous systems, this has led to discontent from both sides. With our new system, these excuses will no longer be a major point of contention. As long as the expectations are met in full, it does not matter to us what you do with the rest of your free time. This is important enough for us to include, and we want to make it clear that we are not judging the validity of your excuses or reasons for your absence and lack of output. The idea is that this will hopefully improve critiques, feedback, and the general social dynamic, creating a more conducive environment for productive thought and action.

“BY FAILING TO PREPARE, YOU ARE PREPARING TO FAIL”

This next section, while quite long, is here for us to show you that we still have faith. We’ve put together a list of strategies that will help you accomplish your task. Normally, in a traditional 9-5 job, when you run out of work, they just give you more work. That’s not how it works here. By managing your time more efficiently, you actually reclaim more for yourself. The more disciplined you are in your daily activities, the more free time you will unlock for yourself throughout this process. The more rigid you are in implementing these strategies, the more flexible you’ll be with your time.

Planning:

Planning is one of the key components for achieving a goal exceptionally well. Without planning, you’re reactive, having to explore the unknown path you have now found yourself on, which will ultimately lead to disaster. Planning makes you more reliable, and when things are reliable, they become predictable. When things become predictable, you can depend on their output, which allows you to think further and further ahead. Even a bad plan is better than no plan. In our case, planning allows both parties to complete the same amount of work in less time than if no plan were created.

This is all to say that a lack of planning and poor foresight will inevitably lead you to falling behind on your obligations, leaving us all in a lose-lose situation. Failure to plan and lack of foresight will no longer come at our expense, but at your expense (see “Consequences”). It is for that imperative reason that you conceive of a comprehensive plan . If you need feedback or critiques on a portion of the piece, or would like oversight on a section, you need to schedule ahead with us to ensure a section of our time is carved out for your purposes.

Tyler and I deem planning so vital to the process that we have obligated ourselves to respond to your requests within twenty-four (24) hours of receiving them. If we fail to meet this obligation, we will compensate you for the hours you could’ve worked if we had responded in a reasonable time. The number of hours will ultimately be determined by us, but we can guarantee it will be non-zero.

Distractions and Focus:

To achieve meaningful progress, it is essential that you minimize interruptions and external temptations. We understand that not all distractions can be mitigated, but of those that cannot, they are the least egregious. Distractions steal more time than you realize, as reengaging is more than the simple process it is made out to be, especially for people with your conditions. They undermine your ability to execute plans efficiently. For these reasons, we suggest you analyze your major distractions and isolate yourself from them as necessary. For example, social groups and general discussion distract me from making meaningful progress on any task, regardless of its nature. To compensate for this pitfall and avoid it, I handle all my required work away from the devices that let me quickly connect with my friends. That’s not to say that everyone gets distracted like me, or that my solutions will work for others. It’s meant only to illustrate my observation, understanding, and problem-solving methodology, so others can implement solutions tailored to their issues.

Under this new system, Tyler and I won’t be available to keep you on task. It is now your responsibility.

Aim small, miss small:

We want to emphasize the importance of breaking down tasks into manageable components. By focusing on the end goal and the big picture, you may experience decision/action paralysis, leaving you feeling overwhelmed and indecisive. Breaking down these components and creating precise, measurable goals will allow you to track progress quantifiably and plan more flexibly. More flexible planning lets you dynamically adapt to new scenarios and events, improving your responses. This strategy will allow you to be more accountable not only to us, but to yourself. Aiming for these smaller goals may result in something less than perfect in the end, while aiming for one broad, vague, and unexplored goal may leave you with nothing at all.

Discipline:

Discipline is the foundation that allows you to meaningfully start, implement, and complete the strategies listed above. Without discipline, even the best plans and ideas remain on paper, your focus flees, and if abandoned altogether, smaller, deliberate goals lose impact.

Being disciplined in planning helps you be self-critical and objective, enabling you to create more realistic plans and carry them out in a pragmatic way.

Being disciplined in your focus allows you to reclaim more of your hours while getting more done. Unlocking parts of the day that have been permanently behind bars.

Being disciplined in standards and aiming to create the best will leave you much closer to the mark than someone who only aims to get a product out that’s “good enough”.

CONSEQUENCES

The consequences for failing to meet our expectations are meant to be straightforward. Implementation and our interpretation of the consequences will also be discussed to help you get a full picture of how we will investigate and assess potential violations.

While some of the consequences and expectations listed above are not yet established, by the time work resumes and a mutual understanding of this document is agreed upon, the consequences will be further dialed in to reflect the certainty of our future discussion. However, the major pain points and intentions are listed below, so it’s important to read them now.

Firstly , failing to meet our expectations will result in a refund request. Failure to fulfill the refund request within three (3) days will result in us requesting chargebacks from our banks and PayPal, which may result in PayPal taking action against your account for soliciting a ‘Goods and Services’ transaction as a ‘Friends and Family’ one.

Secondly , we reserve the right and can imagine scenarios where our expectations shouldn’t always apply for moral reasons. These scenarios involve cataclysmic scale, not limited to death, economic collapse, war, major weather events, power outage, and homelessness.

Finally , failure to complete the implementation stage within three (3) days without approved extensions will result in a refund request and, if needed, escalate to a chargeback.

GENERAL THOUGHTS

Without the ability to practice discipline and hold yourself accountable for your actions, these strategies will bear no fruit and are meaningless. All of this requires ownership and accountability, from both sides, for both sides. If we do not help you, you cannot help us, and vice versa. It is our opinion that we are offering, and at times begging for work to be done, only to receive a promise of work. Let us be clear: there have been multiple occasions when we have received only a promise of work, with no actual work completed until days later, in the most egregious circumstances.

We are exhausted from trying to double-handedly steer you toward a project you claim to be super excited about. Every time we implement your wishes, we see less work than if we had simply refused and continued on the path you least desired. We do not derive enjoyment from enforcing our wishes upon you, but we see no other alternative that has consistently met our expectations. Whether intentional or not, the amount of gaslighting that has objectively occurred with respect to promises and actions is on the cusp of being conspiratorial and, at a minimum, fraudulent.

We have not received our money 's worth for anything, as no final product has been delivered, and extra amounts paid in advance for promises of work have not borne any fruit. Unfortunately, we’ve come to the conclusion that it is “our way or the highway,” so to speak. Restricting and assuming the duties of a traditional middle manager is outside our nature; it is repulsive and antithetical to the way we believe quality work is produced at every level. As we see it, we have no other options to consider.

Finally, it is unfortunate to see our good favor be used and abused in this manner by someone most of the Discord would consider a friend, and at minimum a close acquaintance. If we had hired a stranger to complete this task and got the same treatment that you are giving us, this project wouldn’t have made it past the first weekend of January. Yes, we have been hard on you at times, but it would be an unfair characterization of our behavior to claim that we are doing this to belittle, insult, or emotionally break you down. We know that you are capable of completing this project and have the skill to do an amazing job.

Not only will this allow you to showcase a larger art piece to attract higher-paying clients, but it will also let us put money in the pockets of the people we interact with to improve their lives in a preferably stress-free way, doing something they love. Our goal isn’t for you to rush this out and try to squeeze every drop of labor and free time out of you for our benefit. That’s the goal of an employer who gives you a W2 at the end of the year.

We’ve tried to give you autonomy and allow you to work at a pace you’re comfortable with. We’ve admitted to our ignorance regarding the amount of work required and have offered to increase your pay proportionally to the extra work required. All of those gestures have been met with lackluster results, poor communication, and missed expectations. You’ve lied, cheated, and, frankly, stolen our money, and in return, we’ve been led astray, given empty promises, misdirected, and left without the progress or honesty you’ve repeatedly assured us would come. I personally find it hard to differentiate this experience from that of a phone scam operation in India. I know this comparison may seem harsh, and I’ll be the first to admit it doesn’t map on exactly, but if you completely disagree, please explain to me the difference.

GOING FORWARD AND COMMENTS FROM YOU

To implement some of the essential changes proposed, we require your cooperation. We’ve tried our best to remain respectful while airing our grievances and conveying their importance. It’s a hard and delicate balance to strike, so we would appreciate your forgiveness if we’ve missed the mark.

We’d like to invite your thoughts at this time. You’re welcome to write a response like ours or craft one in your preferred style. If you’d like to leave comments on the document or discuss in a voice chat, we can arrange that as well. We are not looking to argue or debate about what has happened in the past. We only care about the process going forward. If you feel that this is something you can agree to without many changes, we can start working on implementations as soon as you are available.