I'm restarting my "Today" document.

It's a short note on my phone that I read every morning.

It contains:

• What I do each day if possible (meditation, mini-workout, daily video, post for ChezFilms) with advice or an idea if needed.
• Long-term directions: ideas to implement regularly regarding presence, social life, creativity.
• A few short-term ideas and reminders, for work or ongoing projects for example.

There's no point accumulating notes if they're not being used. In this sense, the "Today" note is a way of communicating with myself. I keep everything in it that seems important and that I don't want to let myself forget.

It's a very short, living note that I update regularly: what remains has been polished through multiple readings and rewrites, and is therefore generally very strong and very clear. New ideas are added from time to time—which either stand the test of time or don't.

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Related:

• Taking notes to move forward

It happened to me for the first time the day before lockdown.

I'd been meditating for two years and that morning, almost by accident, I stopped the voice in my head.

No more inner chatter, no more constant judgment, no more anxious rumination. Silence.

I was stunned.

It had surely happened to me before but this was the first time I noticed it—and that it lasted. I could maintain this silence.

I spent the day wandering the streets, exploring this new way of experiencing things.

So it's possible to interact with the world without a little voice judging everything? It's possible to look at an object without hearing "I like it or I don't"? To choose the next direction without verbal deliberation? To make a decision without the verdict of an inner judgment?

Exploring further, I understood that verbal thought wasn't the source of action. It's not what "thinks out loud (in your head) to make a decision." Decisions are made elsewhere. It only comments.

And it's perfectly possible (desirable?) to live without this commentary.

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Cory Doctorow coined the term "Enshittification."

On Adam Conover's podcast, I thought he'd give a brief overview, plug his book of the same name, crack a few jokes, and that would be it.

What I found instead: one of the richest and most relevant discussions on technology, intellectual property, and the modern world I've heard in a long time.

Cory explains that the process of enshittification happens in five stages:

1. Create a great product to attract users.
2. "Lock them in" by making it difficult or costly to leave.
3. Degrade the user experience to make it more attractive to business customers.
4. Lock in the business customers in turn, due to a lack of alternatives.
5. Degrade the experience for everyone to capture the remaining surplus value.

Much like banks ("too big to fail"), large platforms derive their power from how hard it is for their users to leave ("too big to care").

This gives them free rein to transform—and ultimately degrade—the customer experience for their own exclusive benefit. Here are 3 examples:

• Google intentionally degraded the relevance of its search engine to multiply ad impressions (+ searches to find a result = + ads).
• In Finland, prices on electronic shelf labels in supermarkets change around 2,000 times a day to ensure the adjusted margin is never lost.
• In the USA, most nurses are freelancers who find work through a platform. The app has access to their credit score, allowing hospitals to offer lower wages to nurses in financial difficulty.

In this process, an app is, according to Cory, a "website wrapped in intellectual property": the law strictly forbids customizing, extending, or adapting an application, under penalty of heavy fines.

Therefore, the user has no way to fight back and "de-shittify" their experience. They are a prisoner.

"Imagine if the person who built your house was the only one allowed to repair it."

Solutions?

The EU's efforts to regulate technology (particularly regarding interoperability) are a good start, he says. But the so-called "Euro Stack" meant to replace the GAFAMs will only be useful with the right migration tools that allow public services to avoid starting from scratch—tools that are impossible to design without reverse engineering.

Ultimately, he believes that large corporations are obsessed with IP (intellectual property) under the illusion that it allows them to bypass the less controllable human factor. But:

"The recipe for making something is far less important than the knowledge needed to follow it."

In the "old abandoned projects I'm finding images of" series:

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I wanted to make a series (yes, I was ambitious when I was young) of animated short films called "Tales for Sad Children," the first installment of which would have been titled "The Password."

The idea was to use 3D (Maya, back then) to create a paper world where the story would take place.

"Some evenings, as a game, Bastien's dad would turn into a monster. And when Bastien's dad got too scary, or hurt too much, there was a password. When you said it, Bastien's dad would stop being a monster. But one day—it was evening—Bastien forgot the password."

You don't know the future.

You don't know whether your plan will work or not.

And if it works, or if it fails, you don't know whether you'll feel what you expected to feel. ("This is everything I wanted but I feel empty.")

And even if everything went as planned, you don't know the consequences of the consequences. The positive or negative occurrence that transforms over time. The blessing that becomes a tragedy, or vice versa.

So much so that it's almost presumptuous to claim we know.

Saying "I'm going to take this action" or "I'm going to go in this direction" because we imagine it will have such and such consequences in the future... is an illusion.

Control is an illusion.

You don't know what inexplicable detour, seemingly useless, will be necessary to lead you where you need to be.

The true guide seems to be instinct. Excitement.

Ignoring these calls to stubbornly push toward what's planned, toward what's reasonable, toward what's well-regarded, is to oppose the flow. To swim against the current. To resist.

And to resist is to suffer.

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Related:

• What do you do when you're doing nothing?
• Two ways to solve problems

I'm allergic to anything that isn't genuine.

Ever since I was a kid, I can't stand ads. ("But some of them are good!" – that's not the point.) I also struggle with certain TV news programs, certain speeches, certain networks.

My problem: the chasm between the stated pretext (I'm entertaining you, sharing a tip, giving you information) and the real motivation (I want your money, your attention, or your likes). It’s not a conscious decision: it just doesn't register. A real mental block.

So when I wanted to grow my business, this became a source of anxiety. Would I have to do the same? Had I been sheltered until now, but, now that I was a business owner, would I have to bite the bullet and churn out fluff?

After a long detour, the answer is... NO. (Phew.)

Not only is it not mandatory, but in my opinion, it's not the right path.

At first, I tried to force it, and it was awful: the smileys, the artificial calls to action, using LLMs to make my posts "more LinkedIn-like." It felt fake. Not my style. And it didn't work.

Then I did some deep work.

For the past two or three years, I started producing videos and articles. Not for LinkedIn, not for work, no: for myself. For (almost) no one to see. (It's working better now 🙂)

My only rule: be absolutely sincere. No hiding behind technique, behind humor, or behind any kind of obligation. And believe me: there's nothing harder than sharing personal ideas in public when nobody asked you to.

So today, I post one article and one video a day (not here). Over time, this has had two consequences: First, it reconciled me with the sound of my own voice. I speak how I speak, and that's going to be just fine.

But above all: this content allowed me to connect with people who like what I do naturally. People who share similar doubts, the same humor, converging interests. These are my peers, my connections, my collaborators.

Then it became clear that it was no longer about the platform: I could find these people everywhere. At a cocktail party. On the street. On LinkedIn. So much so that, little by little, the line between my personal content and my professional posts began to blur.

I express myself the same way whether I'm with a friend, a stranger, or a client.

Some of my LinkedIn posts are now taken directly from my personal blog. Not everyone gets it. That's okay: they're meant for the ones who do.

This new way of doing things has made my communication more aligned, and therefore easier.

And, ultimately, more effective.

"Be yourself so that the people who are looking for you can find you." – Harlan Hamilton

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Related:

• Done with the BS
• Being yourself isn't a luxury
• Pour mieux écrire (French Instagram Reel)

An architecture professor shared this quote with us during a structural engineering seminar back at École des Ponts.

Once the final stone is in place (the "keystone"), an arch stands on its own. No need for nails, concrete, or supports. Not only does it stand, but it can also bear weight. Hence this quote from Primo Levi:

"Why, I asked myself, doesn't the arch collapse, when it has no support? It holds, I answered, because all the stones want to fall in the same motion. This thought brought me great comfort, and I keep it with me for the decisive moment, hoping that I, too, will know how to hold on when everything inside me wants to collapse."
– Primo Levi, The Truce

An unexpected application of the stress tensor to human resilience.

After more than 1,600 episodes over 16 years, American comedian Marc Maron released the final episode of his podcast this week. His last guest: Barack Obama.

I love Marc Maron, his humor, his conversations, and I'm going to be sad that he's stopping. He was one of the first to launch this long-form format at a time when podcasts weren't cool yet.

I found some powerful ideas in this conversation that connect with what I've been thinking about lately. Here are a few of Obama's remarks that struck me:

• At the end of the day, you don't need to agree on everything to work with someone.
• Know what you truly believe in. That's the starting point.
• The post-World War II period wasn't perfect. But at least there was a shared story.
• You have to be tolerant of people. As long as they're not actively trying to harm you, you have to be tolerant.
• Sometimes you win and you're happy. Sometimes you lose and you step back for a while to lick your wounds before coming back. But we're not going to try to destroy you because you lost.
• One of the necessities of liberal democracies is accepting partial victories, not just perfection. The only question is: is it moving in the right direction?
• We're probably going to overshoot the 2-degree Celsius target. Because it's very hard for humans to change their primary energy source in one generation. But we've made progress.

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Related:

• A Bit Depressed by the World
• People who make me believe (French Instagram Reel)

I still haven't added Google Analytics to know how many people read this blog.

And I'm not going to.

Oh, I'm not deluding myself, far from it! I have no secret hopes about the traffic.

Besides, I don't want to know.

This is what the Bhagavad Gita calls "fruitless work": working without expecting any results. I do the work, I do the work, I do the work, as best I can, and then... that's it. The work is the reward.

The upside: my work isn't conditioned by an audience. I don't cut corners on the pretext that "nobody's reading it." I don't rehash the same post just because "the first one did well."

I do the work. Every day. What I know how to do.

Just like everyone else, really.

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Related:

• Goodbye, stats!

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Last night, I was at the round table "Facing Crises: How to Prepare Collectively," moderated by Alexandre Florentin with Ziad Touat, a Crisis Management Advisor, and Christian Clot, an explorer-researcher.

Here are the key takeaways I got from it:

• Crisis management used to be primarily a military affair and was reserved for qualified personnel. Now, the goal is to involve researchers, citizens, and children as much as possible. Developing the right reflexes in those who will face the problem can make all the difference.
• Your ability to manage a crisis depends on your capacity to accept the reality of the situation. The more you are in denial ("this isn't real, it can't be happening"), the harder it will be to take steps to manage the crisis as it truly is. Mental preparation can be crucial.
• The noise level in an ideal crisis room does not exceed 80 decibels. People speak calmly; information is received, verified, and then processed, with the goal of offering the most relevant alternatives to the person who has to make a decision.
• Humility is fundamental. Be wary of those who see the crisis as an opportunity to shine and become the heroes of the situation. Also, be wary of excessive homogeneity in some groups: a crisis room full of engineers will produce an engineering solution. The same goes for soldiers. Cognitive diversity is essential.
• Social connection is the key. If you watch my videos, you know this is a subject that's on my mind. We need to be able to create social bonds at the street, neighborhood, and city level. We must be able to work with people we don't particularly like—or even don't like at all—to achieve common goals when those goals are vital for everyone.

And what about me, am I ready to face a crisis?

Probably one of the main illusions that prevent presence.

Transitions: this idea that the current moment doesn't count "for real," that it's merely the passage to a future we're waiting for.

For example: the journey before the destination—by subway, by plane, on foot. It's not a trip, not an experience, no: its only virtue is to get us somewhere. Nothing positive can happen, nothing is worth paying attention to, except for the bad surprises that will cause delays.

The wait before an event—a meeting, an appointment, an anticipated moment. It's already wasted time, where nothing interesting will happen. We're already in what comes next, in what must happen.

Because in reality, of course, these moments are just as much "the present" as any others.

They could be just as rich, just as vibrant, just as transformative.

Especially since sometimes the destination is disappointing. Or never comes.

That's what I tell myself when I put my son in the car to get on the highway: "Our vacation together starts now." This journey is fully part of it.

And who knows? It might be the best part.

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Related:

• What do you do when you do nothing?
• Time and productivity

I'm doing for ChezFilms the same thing as for the Boulengerie:

A daily video from Monday to Friday to give experts advice on my key topics: narrative strategy, public speaking, and content production.

I was supposed to start this week but I'm wrestling with the workflow: how to make videos that adapt easily across all platforms (Youtube, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, and the website).

It'll be a bit more serious than my personal videos. But not much more.

This idea may be harder to grasp for those unfamiliar with the concept of "emptiness."

But I think about it more and more often. I found it in Robert Burbea's book Seeing that frees.

Here it is: what we call the ego is not a fixed property of a person.

Throughout a lifetime, a week, a day, the ego moves along a spectrum: it manifests more strongly or almost completely disappears depending on the situation.

What governs these variations?

As always: attachment.

When I want or refuse something, when I harbor desire or aversion for an object, that object and my ego appear at the same time. Buddhists call this "dependent arising."

The moment before, I might be in the flow of the present, moving freely from sensation to sensation with complete lightness: no center, no subject, no ego. I'm floating.

Then I attach to a thought. Suddenly, I want, I refuse, I ruminate. The ego is nothing other than this relationship that has just been created between this idea of myself (which was nowhere to be found the second before) and the idea of this object (which doesn't really exist).

Far from being a flaw, the ego is therefore a relationship.

A relationship between two objects that we choose to create ourselves.

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Related:

• Emptiness and Fabrication (archive)
• What Meditation Changed for Me

Today, no connection and no time so parking picture:

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Probably one of my most sincere post.

That's the key question and the trick question.

We feel like we're acting for others, to be kind, to help out, but we're secretly working for ourselves, for our image, for our personal satisfaction.

For example: I'm often suspicious of people who are overly nice to cashiers.

Saying "thank you, have a nice day," sure. But some people overdo it: "Thank you, have a wonderful day, ma'am. And above all, hang in there! Hang in there." The cashier nods politely; she didn't ask for all that. And I find it hard to imagine that the customer, on their way out, doesn't think to themselves "I'm a wonderful person. Look at how I understand and support the little workers."

My theory is that, secretly, this person is doing it for themselves. For their self-esteem.

And that the interaction, by its eminently artificial nature, hasn't lightened the cashier's burden one bit.

I realize I do this too, of course.

Under the guise of being helpful, participating, informing, I'm actually running PR campaigns to prove that I'm a good guy. That people think well of me.

Am I trying to understand this person to help them, or to show them that I understand? Am I telling this story to inform them, or because it makes me look good?

As usual, the goal isn't to change but to notice. Once brought to light, these flaws fade away.

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Related:

• The Battle to Exist
• Done with the BS

If I had to sum up what I've learned that matters most over the past few years, I'd say this:

1. To stand out, you need to set up a system.

Succeeding at something once, even brilliantly, isn't enough. It's the repetition of an action—even a simple one—that brings the transformation we're looking for—within ourselves or in the world.

This holds true in spirituality (nothing more repetitive and simple than meditation), in music (we even call it "practice"), in work, in communication, in relationships, in health...

Persistence in one direction matters more than intelligence, willpower, or talent. But...

2. No system without alignment.

Discipline, willpower, good resolutions (...) will never be enough to stay the course. A few days, a few months, maybe. But soon enough, we burn out, we break down.

The only way to set up a long-term system is to be perfectly aligned.

To be entirely yourself. To do what's 100% natural. To blindly follow your instinct and let everything else fall away.

Except that... Very few people truly know who they are and what they want. Their self-knowledge is obscured by intellectual ideas and decades of conditioning. Hence...

3. No alignment without self-knowledge.

This is the cornerstone of the whole structure: learning to know yourself.

Doing the inner work to deconstruct the preconceptions we hold about ourselves and the world in order to reach our truth.

This truth is the real source of action. The one that will last. And therefore change things.

"Know thyself." - Socrates
"Become who you are." - Nietzsche

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Related:

• What do you do when you're doing nothing?
• Being yourself is not a luxury
• To break through, willpower isn't enough (French video)

My film Construire (The Builders) made for the École des Ponts was screened at SETEC last night, followed by a discussion and a cocktail reception.

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It was a wonderful evening. The technical issues I had noticed during the first visit had been brilliantly fixed and the screening quality was excellent. I met people who share the same doubts as I do. Also: many viewers enjoyed the film, even on their second or third viewing.

It was rejuvenating.

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Related links:

• Construire (The Builders) (film page)
• LinkedIn Post (French)
• Projo Setec (French Insta Reel)

You can optimize the wrong things.

You can speed up in the wrong direction.

You can be overwhelmed by work that leads nowhere.

Remember: every step taken in the wrong direction will have to be retraced. These efforts won't just have been in vain—they'll have taken you further from your goal.

So don't throw yourself into action right away.

Sit down. Feel which way the wind blows. The strength of the current.

See what desire drives you. What direction calls to you.

Because once you're on your way, how easy or hard each step feels will depend entirely on that first impulse.

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Related:

• Efficiency doesn't make you happy (French video)

Thanks to Guillaume Cloux for these photos from the Migrul shoot.

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ChezFilms is moving into Télé Bocal's premises in Belleville!

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Really happy with this new place. Especially since I've also changed my pied-à-terre in Paris and I'm not sleeping far from here. (I realized this morning when I walked over and arrived way, way earlier than I'd expected.)

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Related:

• I'm green! (French video)