Édouard Pons, who composed the music for Migrul, had mentioned this old piece of nonsense I had shot in one afternoon at Off Courts five years ago.

I just found it on an old hard drive and it's worse than I remembered.

At the same time, I think it's the ancestor of my web series Panic in Space which is coming out soon. In that sense, it was perhaps a necessary evil.

Yes, I know: very New Age.

But I've been noticing lately just how true it is.

When you look at how the physical and mental work together, you realize the body is kind of like the mind's notebook.

Here's the thing: thoughts are incredibly fleeting. They zip through our minds at lightning speed without leaving a trace. We think about tomorrow, lunch, a gift for mom, that sore toe... One thought leads to another, and we're just bouncing around with no real direction.

Nothing but mental chatter.

But when our brain decides an idea actually matters—something worth coming back to—it creates a bookmark. An internal sticky note that forces that thought to resurface. And it does this by linking it to an emotion.

Because emotions are physical, they stick around way longer than thoughts do. That knot in your stomach, the tight grip of stress or anxiety, the rush of fear or excitement... All of that lasts minutes, hours even.

The emotion acts like an anchor, keeping our wandering mind tethered to the same spot. The moment we try to move on, our body pipes up to remind us something's not right. The thought comes flooding back.

But sometimes it works the other way around.

When I started meditating a few years back, I realized the morning anxiety I'd been feeling was actually... stomach-related. I had this knot in my gut, and whatever worry crossed my mind would just latch onto it. Turns out the problem I was obsessing over wasn't really the problem at all.

I stopped eating before bed and the anxiety vanished.

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Related:

• Thinking Is Not The Solution
• What meditation changed for me

I'm invited on November 8th to the screening of my film about the École des Ponts at SETEC, a major engineering consultancy firm. In preparation for the debate that will follow the screening, I was asked for a copy of this engraving found in the film, which represents an "idealized" vision of the École des Ponts:

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In the film, Antoine Picon, engineer and architectural historian, provides a vibrant commentary on it, which is juxtaposed with the school's life today.

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Related links:

• "The Builders" film page (chezfilms.com)

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Lazy Sunday at home. Still feeling a bit under the weather. I took the opportunity to rewatch "The People v. O.J. Simpson". What an incredible miniseries. The writing, the direction. And Sarah Paulson is amazing in it. Brava! Bravo to everyone!

This is my 50th video since I started posting every day again and I've now reached 300 YouTube subscribers.

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On Instagram and TikTok, we're closer to 3000 followers but YouTube is harder.

To navigate this complexity, my editorial strategy rests on three essential foundations:

• blah
• blah
• blah

A strategy I could sum up with this ancient quote that guides me every day:

"Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't." – Buddha (maybe)

All this to say I'm not trying to understand. I post and we'll see what happens.

That said, I'd be lying if I said I haven't started spotting certain aspects that influence a video's success. But I don't let these ideas overshadow my goal:

Telling whatever I feel like, whenever I feel like it, without hiding.

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Related:

• Insultometer
• 3 Nicolas in 1
• One video per day (again)

I regularly work from the Off Courts offices.

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I've been taking notes my whole life and it's done me practically no good. Until recently, because I changed my system.

First, let me clarify: I've been using Obsidian for 3 or 4 years (after Apple Notes, Airtable, Notion...) and even though I love this software – I'll talk more about it later – it's not a tool issue. It's a process issue.

Before, I was hoarding notes.

Like an obsessive person suffering from Diogenes syndrome: I was afraid of losing an idea, of letting the providential thought slip through my fingers. So I accumulated, and accumulated. And once in my vault, I did nothing with them.

Over time, I found technical solutions to use my notes more – mainly by putting them in front of my eyes – but that wasn't enough.

What was missing? Pressure.

The most important thing isn't writing a note: it's the work you do afterward to integrate it into a body of knowledge that you use every day. Applying pressure to a set of ideas so they aggregate and form a diamond.

So now, I proceed like this:

1. I write a note in a catch-all file (Inbox)
2. I then copy it into the relevant file (e.g.: productivity, presence, creation)
3. In this file, I group connected notes into large sections with subtitles and summaries.
4. I create (or maintain) at the top of this file a global summary in two or three sentences that captures the essence of what's important, often in the form of clear and concrete advice.
5. I rinse and repeat.

The final objective is therefore to produce this targeted advice that is immediately applicable and that I organize myself to reread regularly. Having compiled it from multiple sources makes it very personal and concrete.

That was one of this morning's activity.

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Related:

• Marketing BY Dummies (example note)
• Obsidian (website)

I've noticed that the times I got angriest were when someone acted as if I didn't exist.

As if where I stood, there was no one.

The driver who nearly runs me over. The fellow passenger who plays their music as if they were alone. The colleague who completely disregards what I say.

I've noticed it in others too. The strongest emotions arise when we feel ignored.

So much so that much of what we do seems designed to prove that we exist.

Work, conversation, creation, networking... Everything seems subconsciously calibrated to give the world proof that we're really here.

As if our essential fear was being a ghost. The existential dread of being nothing but a specter that needs to thrash about to be seen.

And when someone ignores us, it's as if they were highlighting this emptiness. As if, with a gesture or a remark, they were reducing to nothing all the efforts we make to exist everyday.

Related:

• Being yourself isn't a luxury
• The regret you can avoid on your death bed (French video)