Dui Toledo on Life

leadership

"How sure are you?" – Calibrating our confidence levels

While explaining is useful in justifying our confidence when we're sure, it's most useful for decreasing our confidence when we're NOT sure.

leadership

Focus on fewer goals by asking "What's going on?"

Most of the time, when we have too many things to focus on, we lack a correct diagnosis.

self-discipline

Rest: sustaining high performance

Top performance is characterized by the recovery necessary for the next peak, followed by the subsequent recovery.

leadership

Why, What, and How: Creating effective goals

"Why, What, and How" come in order of importance and difficulty.

leadership

You can build an excellent team

The data shows that teams, not companies, make or break an employee's experience at work.

leadership

"You must not fool yourself" – How to pursue self-awareness

When unsure about how we are doing, we predictably choose the most flattering alternative.

leadership

Avoid compromise and clarify goals

In order to agree on how to achieve the goals, the team must first agree on the goals.

self-discipline

Are you optimizing for feelings or outcomes?

Nobody takes creatine because they like drinking wet baby powder.

self-discipline

Competition as a path to self-awareness

There's no false humility in competition – only real humility.

self-discipline Featured

What if you only had 2 years to live?

"If I knew I only had 2 years to live, would I make the same decisions about life I'm making now?"

self-discipline

Have an activity to do right after work

Suddenly, I started leaving work on time, but only on those 3 days a week when I needed to be at the gym by 6pm.

self-discipline

Manufacturing needs for motivation and focus

Because we often haven't clarified or understood the needs for the activities we perform, these needs don't help us focus on outcomes and don't create motivation.

self-discipline

How to balance constraints

No magic allows us to sleep all day and spend our free time on our phones but also to be incredibly healthy, energetic, and productive. We must choose what we really value.

self-discipline

Going fast is different from rushing

While rushing is about what you're doing now, being fast is about what you've done over the past several years.

self-discipline Featured

Hold on to constraints

In which I hold on to constraints by using only consonants, "a," "i," "o," and "u"

Do your best

The difference between a weak effort and our best matters for how we live

self-discipline

Make important things automatic

By automating operations and decisions through choice architecture, we leverage our status quo bias and ensure important tasks get consistently done.

self-discipline

Drive: The desire to strive

Drive is when desire and striving align. The actions we take from our desires and those necessary for our striving are so aligned that achieving the future we want feels good.

self-discipline Featured

Why we have unhealthy desires and how to stop

We must reflect not on whether fulfilling the desire feels good but whether it is good by the criteria of goodness of our values.

meta

Vacation and starting a dialogue

So on my vacation, besides reading a lot, I plan to reflect on how to expand my audience while staying authentic. I'd love to hear from you.

self-discipline

Restarting what we stopped (or getting back on the horse)

Getting off the horse happens sometimes, and it's okay. I enjoy my time off the horse without guilt because I know I'll be back on the horse soon.

105 hours

105 hours: Self-Imposed Routines

When it comes to routines, the goal is months and years, not days and weeks. Routines are about what we can consistently do over long periods of time.

105 hours Featured

105 hours: One thing at a time

Every time we multitask, at least one of those "tasks" is done on a digital device such as our smartphone, computer, or TV.

105 hours

105 hours: Making time to be alone

Solitude is not a luxury; it's a necessary part of life.

105 hours Featured

105 hours: TV is a behavioral drug

We use TV for similar reasons we may use alcohol, sweets, and other drugs: for their psychoactive effects.