Break Out by Joel Osteen

In Break Out, Joel Osteen encourages readers to leave behind limiting beliefs and stretch themselves to have faith for and achieve a bigger life. The themes of this book are very similar to those of his other books.

First, Osteen teaches that God can turn things around. Your past is not an indicator of your future. God can make things change quickly. In the meantime, Osteen encourages readers to do what is right.

In light of this, one should dream big dreams. Not only can God turn things around, He can accomplish more in your life than you can imagine. Hope for things that seem beyond your reach; God can help you achieve them.

Because you are not living alone, but always have the aid of God, you don’t have to worry about being inadequate. If you lack anything you need to achieve your God-given dream, He can provide what you need.

This likewise should affect your prayers. Talk to God about your bid dreams. Especially talk to God about the promises in His Word or examples of how He had provided similar help to others.

As I have mentioned in reviews of other books by Osteen, his works are not especially or uniquely Christian. Like the works of Norman Vincent Peale or Robert H. Schuller, if you strip out any mention of God, you’ll still have a self-help book. An the self-help messages may help you be happier and achieve more. A Christian message, however, cannot be stripped of Christ, why we need him, and what He does for us, and still have content.

Joel Osteen also wrote

I Declare

You Can, You Will

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested it

Be All You Can Be! by John C. Maxwell

Creative Living for Today by Maxwell Maltz

Life's Not Fair, but God is Good by Robert H. Schuller

Positive Imaging by Norman Vincent Peale

Power in Praise by Merlin R. Carothers

The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale

You Can if You Think You Can by Norman Vincent Peale

Osteen, Joel. Break Out: 5 Keys to Go Beyond Your Barriers and Live an Extraordinary Life. New York: FaithWords, 2013.

A Mind for Numbers by Barbara A. Oakley

I was bad at math. Possibly I still am. I missed a lot of recess in third grade as I struggled with multiplication tables. I had to take Calculus II twice in college.

This isn’t an inherent quality of mine. My struggles with math stemmed from lack of effort, poor study habits and inadequate preparation leading to falling farther and farther behind. (Incidentally, I managed to earn and engineering degree in spite of myself.) These are things that can be overcome by learning skill and developing good habits.

In A Mind for Number, Barbara Oakley describes the learning skills and habits needed to master math and science. Actually, you could use the advice in this book to improve you’re learning in any field. I started a new job a couple of months ago and I’m using some of the techniques to get up to speed as fast as I can and develop a deeper understanding of the industry I’m working in.

People tend to associate math and science with focused thinking. It is necessary to focus, especially when you are taking in new material. However, it is also very important to take breaks to allow for diffuse thinking, something like daydreaming, so the brain can stumble upon connections between thoughts, ideas and memories that are not obvious, or even available, when you are focused. This diffuse thinking helps one to gain a broader understanding of a subject that makes acquiring new information easier when you return to focused thought.

That broader understanding is important. Math and science is more than a great pile of facts. There are concepts that link these facts, and understanding these concepts helps you to understand and remember the facts. As Oakley points out, mastery of math and science is not only about knowing techniques for solving problems, is also about recognizing when to use a technique.

You brain can be your friend or enemy when it comes to learning. Oakley gives readers tips on how to get friendly with your brain. Struggling with a subject can be the result from leaning on our brains weaknesses. We can learn to apply our brains strengths to learning. Some of the things our brain is good at are remembering locations, remembering images (the wilder the better) and forming powerful habits.

Oakley doesn’t just talk about learning skills. Her book is structured in a way that demonstrates and encourages readers to use the techniques she describes.

I wish I had come across a book like this when I was much younger. Learning is a skill, and improving learning skills can help you improve in anything you want to learn.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Mindset by Carol S. Dweck

Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer

The Organized Mind by Daniel J. Levitin

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

The Procrastination Equation by Piers Steel

Rapt by Winifred Gallagher

Succeed by Heidi Grant Halvorson

Oakley, Barbara. A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science (Even If You Flunked Algebra). New York: TarcherPerigee, 2014.

Our constitution was made for a moral and religious people

Our constitution was made for a moral and religious people.  It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other kind.

-John Adams

Public Utility Depreciation by NARUC

I don’t usually read reference books, or textbooks, all the way through like I did with Public Utility Depreciation Practices. Because of my new job as a “depreciation engineer,” I undertook reading this guide from the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC).

The title describes the content of the book. It includes some historical and legal background, but the bulk of the book is aimed at the practicalities of determining depreciation expenses.

The main elements going into depreciation rate determination are depreciation base, service life, net salvage, and depreciation computation methods. Depreciation base is the starting point; it represents the initial investment of capital that is to be recovered as a cost through depreciation. Generally it is the book cost (original cost of the infrastructure including materials, equipment, labor and related costs).

Most methods of computing depreciation are referred to as age-life methods. These methods spread the cost of the expected life of a piece of infrastructure. The preferred method is straight line depreciation. To apply these methods, one will need to know or estimate the life of the infrastructure under consideration and the net salvage value. The depreciation rate is the difference between the base and the net salvage, divided by the life of the infrastructure. With the exception of unique pieces, like types of infrastructure are lumped together because they are expected to have a similar life (wooden poles, steel poles, copper wire, conduit, etc.).

Life expectancy can be estimated by several methods. Survivor curves are developed from statistical studies of the life of particular types of infrastructure, though other methods may be used depending on the type and quality of data available.

Net salvage is estimated based on experience. The gross salvage is the price received for the equipment or materials retired. The cost of removal is subtracted from this to calculate the net salvage. Sometimes it can cost more to remove infrastructure than the value of the retired equipment and materials, so net salvage can be negative.

Calculating depreciation is more art than science. Projections of future values are inherently tricky. Growth can cause infrastructure to become inadequate before it is expected, or slower than expected growth can extend the life infrastructure. New regulations can make infrastructure obsolete in an instant, as can new technologies. In addition, utilities are constantly adding and retiring infrastructure. Amidst this uncertainty, regulators must balance the level of service needed by utility customers with the returns needed by utility investors in a complex environment.

Admittedly, a book from 1968 may seem dated. However, many of the practices described are still in use. Government regulation of monopoly utility rates in the United States has been occurring for more than a century, and the practices to not change rapidly. Even so, some of the practices described were considered obsolete, or near obsolescence, at the time of publication, and are not likely to be encountered now unless you’re a financial historian combing through moldy account books.

National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners. Public Utility Depreciation Practices. 1968. Washington, DC: Author, 1974.

The Vulnerable Fortress by James R. Taylor and Elizabeth J. Van Every

Taylor, James R., and Elizabeth J. Van Every. The Vulnerable Fortress. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993.
ISBN 0-8020-7773-0

Taylor and Van Every explore the traditional model of organization as machine and the difficulties discovered in attempts to map real organizations into machines (computers and information technology). They conclude that the machine model is inadequate and offer as an alternative the model of the organization as conversation and text.



Perhaps the most useful thing is the book is the demonstration of the inadequacies of the machine model; the authors show it is necessary to look elsewhere. The alternative model is perhaps too new and theoretical to be of immediate use, but the authors introduce some interesting concepts as they develop their model. These concepts are frames and scripts. Frames are templates or archetypes that we overlay onto situations and give us perspective on how the elements of a situation are related. Scripts are similar to frames, but specify behaviors or sequences of events. It is interesting to think of learning as the reframing of a situation that allows one to examine the old frame.

The book is a lot to take in at once. The concepts and arguments are sometimes so abstract that they become difficult to follow. While I think it has merit, the model of conversation and text does not readily illuminate or simplify understanding of organizations because conversation and text themselves are difficult to understand. It is difficult to put a frame around, learn about, language, conversation and text because these form a frame that encompasses most human activity. The authors are right to say that conversation and text cannot be ignored and cannot be reconciled to the machine model, but they ask the reader to make a large conceptual leap to say that the organization is conversation and text.