P Van

Oct 16, 2021

Beanie Babies 2.0: Can NFTs hold true value?

To determine if a digital item has value, you must look at the benefits it confers to the owner. Let’s try to make sense of NFTs. In their most basic form, an NFT is a link (URL) to a media file. Think about when you upload an image to Dropbox…

Cryptocurrency

6 min read

Beanie Babies 2.0: Can NFTs hold true value?

Aug 31, 2020

A Check-In with Your Self

Are you feeling any pain in your body? Have you taken a deep breathe in the last 5 minutes? Does your jaw, neck, or stomach have a sensation of tightness? Are you in opposition of something right now? Do you fear something? Are you grasping for something right now? Do…

1 min read

Jul 20, 2020

What It’s Like to Be Human, and How to Become a Force in the World

Getting out of your personal prison (This is a living document. I used Medium more like a public notepad for my thoughts. Articles are subject to being re-written and expanded as more information is added over time.) Levels of Being an Impactful Person Level 0: Focused on personal wants and…

Human

3 min read

Dec 9, 2019

What if you could walk in to a burning building and save a life, right now?

🔥🏢 Well, you can! Here’s the smartest way to start saving lives with donations. After some quick research, I did the following. I should be giving more, but this was an easy first step in creating a strategy for giving. I created a monthly donation of $300 ($3,600 / year)…

Charity

2 min read

What if you could walk in to a burning building and save a life, right now?

Oct 15, 2019

Stop Spreading Imposter Syndrome

In June of 2018, a zine titled The Imposter appeared on my desk at Facebook HQ. It had been created by Facebook designers and distributed internally to the few hundred members of the design team. With a mild sense of dread, I opened the cover and read the note from…

Imposter Syndrome

7 min read

Apr 25, 2016

← Back to the Toolkit | Vipassana

← Back to the Toolkit | Vipassana Vipassana Meditation is Hardcore I sat silently in the woods for 6 days and gained a valuable tool from the experience. No speaking, no eye-contact, no reading, no writing, and no modern technology. Many forms of meditation are about relaxation and treating stress. …

Zen

1 min read

Apr 25, 2016

My Toolkit For Living

The Nature of Happiness Tara Brach (Book: Radical Acceptance, Podcast: iTunes) Rick Hansen (Books: Hardwiring Happiness, Buddha’s Brain, Newsletter: Just One Thing) Alan Watts (Book: The Wisdom of Insecurity) Each person has a baseline level of satisfaction which can vary in the short term but returns to the baseline over time. …

Neuroscience

4 min read

Apr 25, 2016

← Back to the Toolkit | Happiness

← Back to the Toolkit | Happiness Happiness is Not a Fish That You Can Catch Tara Brach (Book: Radical Acceptance, Podcast: iTunes) Rick Hansen (Books: Hardwiring Happiness, Buddha’s Brain, Newsletter: Just One Thing) Alan Watts (Book: The Wisdom of Insecurity) What is happiness? Is it a feeling of satisfaction with everything in your life? A person cannot remain…

Happiness

2 min read

Mar 2, 2016

How To Advocate for Data Throughout the Project Process

If you’re building interactive data visualization projects as an individual creator or in a small team (2 to 4 people), you may be able to conceive, design, and build projects without too much explicit process or documentation. …

Design

6 min read