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[Book] “The Era of Laziness” by Olivier Babeau – my review
I shared a few excerpts from the book The Era of Laziness by Olivier Babeau (Amazon link, Fnac link) on Instagram, and you asked me for its title. So I decided to dedicate a blog post to it. The first book by Olivier Babeau I read was The Tyranny of Entertainment, which I talked about here. The Era of Laziness, released in January 2025, has the subtitle How we and our children have lost the sense of effort. I think this book could have been titled How ease will destroy us or The era when everyone relies on others’ work. It follows in the footsteps of his previous book on…
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My Current Favorites – [March 2025]: My Sewing Books
You’ve guessed it, my new obsession is sewing. More specifically, tailoring. While looking for winter coats when I settled in Lille, I realized how poor the quality of ready-to-wear clothing is (regardless of price) and told myself that sewing was the solution to access the best possible quality without breaking the bank. So, in sewing, there’s soft tailoring and structured tailoring. Even in haute couture, workshops are physically separated into two. In soft tailoring, you have rather fluid, normal garments; and in structured tailoring, more structured garments (jackets, coats). While a tailor must know soft tailoring techniques, a soft tailor doesn’t necessarily know tailoring techniques. So, to delve into tailoring,…
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[Reflection] #19: Procrastination
In general, people take me for a hard worker, but that’s not the case. I only work when I’m passionate. When I’m not, I drag my feet even more than others. However, I have a trick I’d like to share with you to move forward nonetheless. Recently, I read a book in Vietnamese called “72 Strategies of Chinese Management” (72 Phép Quản Lý Kiểu Trung Quốc), a modern version of The Art of War applied to business, and these lessons can also be applied to individuals. Here’s a summary of a passage I really liked: The Power of Small Steps “Without taking small steps, how can you travel thousands of…
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Attending a LOSC Champions League match in Lille
As much as I’ve attended football matches on three different continents, I had never yet had the opportunity to attend a Champions League match. Our arrival in Lille is going to be the occasion, because LOSC has qualified for the round of 16 of the competition and I can get tickets through my works council. There are advantages to becoming an employee again! I even managed to get two tickets, which allows me to offer our Lille friend A. to come along. Although Lille is not the favorite against the German club Borussia Dortmund, they got an excellent draw (1-1) in the first leg in Germany. So the suspense is…
