We all have different definitions on what is difficult. Maybe annoying or bothersome had been better words, but below beats nesting things:

    df |> select(..) |>
        filter(...) |>
        mutate(...) |>
        ...

And every time I've learned something about the intermediate result I can add another line, or save the result in a new variable and branch my exploration. And I can easily just highlight and run and number of of steps from step 1 onwards.

Even oldschool

    df2 <- df[...]
    df2 <- df2[...]

Gives me the same benefit.

Or better yet, use CTEs: https://duckdb.org/docs/stable/sql/query_syntax/with.html