Book Review: What's Your Formula?

What's Your Formula?: Combine Learning Elements for Impactful Training by Brian Washburn
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

There's the periodic table of the elements for chemistry and now there is the table of elements for training. Brian takes many elements that can be combined to produce engaging and effective training. I typically read the book on the train going home from work so it took a bit to get through it because I kept pulling out a notebook to write down ideas of how to use his ideas. Loved, loved, loved the practical ideas to help make accounting training interesting but informative. Written for corporate training but applicable for secondary education as well.

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Time to Stop Voting

 From James Clear's weekly newsletter 8/6/21:

"A quick and easy tip for building habits that last:

Pick a standard time and place to do it.

It’s easier to wake up knowing "I exercise at 4pm" than to decide each time when to fit a habit into your day.

If it’s already decided, all you need to do is show up."

I'm reminded of working with a vice principal who one day stated that he gave up voting many years before. As a former government teacher, I was appalled.

Then he said, "I gave up voting if I was going to walk and read my Bible every day. I go to bed every night and set my alarm to have time to read the Bible first and then walk every morning. I don't wake up in the morning and vote if I'm going to do those or not."

I'm thinking about the things I need to quit voting about.

I Am a Debtor

Yesterday the minister at church quoted from I Am a Debtor, a poem by Robert Murray McCheyne. These are two of my favorite stanzas from the poem.

When this passing world is done,
When has sunk yon glaring sun,
When we stand with Christ in glory,
Looking o’er life’s finished story,
Then, Lord, shall I fully know –
Not till then – how much I owe.

When I stand before the throne,
Dressed in beauty not my own,
When I see thee as thou art,
Love thee with unsinning heart,
Then, Lord, shall I fully know –
Not till then – how much I owe.

Then later in the afternoon I was doing my regular Bible reading and not being too excited about Isaiah. Then I read chapter 55 and I read these verses. Oh the wonderful invitation of God to seek Him, and I am reminded how much I owe.

“Come, everyone who thirsts,
    come to the waters;
and he who has no money,
    come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
    without money and without price.

“Seek the Lord while he may be found;
    call upon him while he is near;
7 let the wicked forsake his way,
    and the unrighteous man his thoughts;
let him return to the Lord, that he may have compassion on him,
    and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.
8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
    neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.
9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
    so are my ways higher than your ways
    and my thoughts than your thoughts.

“For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven
    and do not return there but water the earth,
making it bring forth and sprout,
    giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,
11 so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
    it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,
    and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

“For you shall go out in joy
    and be led forth in peace;
the mountains and the hills before you
    shall break forth into singing,
    and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.
13 Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress;
    instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle;