First Week Back at BYU

My first day with my new ward in Provo was very enjoyable. I am a part of the 241st Young Single Adult Ward in Provo, Utah. My stake president and bishop issued the following five-fold challenge:

• Pray on my knees every morning and night.
• Read the scriptures--especially the Book of Mormon--every day.
• Study, ponder, and follow the updated Strength of Youth pamphlet.--https://www.lds.org/bc/content/shared/content/english/pdf/ForTheStrengthOfYouth-eng.pdf?lang=eng
• Always renew my temple recommend (expiration date Mar 2014).
• Act and not be acted upon. Please see the April 2012 Ensign article by Elder David A. Bednar via this link: http://www.lds.org/liahona/2012/04/the-atonement-and-the-journey-of-mortality?lang=eng&media=audio

I fully believe that any individual who joins me in this challenge will become, as Elder Bednar says, "bad to good" or "good to better."

Another spiritual experience I had over the weekend was discovering an article created by Elder Clayton Christensen of the Seventy. http://www.claytonchristensen.com/pdf/Why_I_Belong_and_Why_I_Believe.pdf

Elder Christensen is not only a leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but he is also the Kim B. Clark Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. He is highly innovative regarding disruptive and sustaining technologies. In fact, he is the authour of the insightful book entitled, The Innovator's Dilemma--When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail. This book enables the reader to understand why companies go from the top of the pile to the bottom of the pile.

Overall, I had an incredible first week back at BYU accompanied by a highly motivational weekend!

Tips for Successful Email Writing

I-The subject line must be:
1-Specific (e.g. meeting time, day, location, deadline date, topic)
2-Eye-catching-The receiver will be led to respond faster than normal

II-The subject line must not be:
1-Mistaken as junk mail and deleted
2-Blank
3-Messy

III-EOM (End of Message) technique alerts the recipient that you only want to use the subject line as your message:
"My mom's surgery is at 9am. We can Skype at that time. Cameron"
or "My mom's surgery is at 9am. We can Skype at that time. [end of message]"

IV-The attached documents should be properly named and often should be sent in multiple formats (e.g. pdf, doc) for the user's easy access to the files and ability to manipulate the documents with less likelihood of having to convert a file to the desired format.

V-Be aware that the memory space of some servers are rather full and large files may be rejected. Possible solutions are to inform the receiver or change the size of the file.

VI-If more than one file is attached, the attachments should be organised by level of importance.

VII-Inform the receiver that there are attachments in the email

VIII-Rather than having many topics lumped into one email, write multiple emails. This helps the counterparty organise his or her inbox, act upon every important task, and makes each email clearer for them AND you.

IX-Make sure you use the proper titles of respect for the addressee.

X-Involve all relevant parties in your email.
1-Think of this as a "gotong-royong" (cooperation) with bolding like this:
*Cameron: with his task
*Shanda: with her task
2-Recognise when communication should be done through a secretary.

XI-Try to estimate the schedule of when the receiver will check his or her inbox.
1-Remember time zones, public holidays, vacations, work schedules, work cultures, and user habits (e.g. Adam checking his personal email when he wakes up to eat breakfast).

XII-Specify desired further action to be completed by the receiver (e.g. phone call or follow-up appt.). Additionally, clarify what actions will be completed by you.

XIII-Copying and pasting chunks of information from other sources a.k.a. "print screen" is valuable for conveying information required in some emails.

XIV-Ensure that any links are hyperlinked for easy clicking functionality.

XV-Close with something like the following examples:
1-Best regards, BR, regards, sincerely, abundant love, much thanks, all the best, yang benar, dengan ikhlas, love, நேர்மையுடன், அன்புடன், etc.

XVI-Use the most attractive, clear, and appropriate fonts in the email (change the default font, if necessary)

XVII-Bullet points or numbering systems are useful

XVIII-Divider lines are a simple way to separate ideas and information for easier reading:
___________________________________________

XIX-Include your standardised contact information below your name at the bottom of the email
1-Specify the best method of contact, if necessary

XX-Reread your email to ensure accurancy in wording and satisfaction of structure.

Finally I am Posting Something to this Blog!

Anyone who has heard even a little bit of information about me knows that I love languages. I apologise to the reader in advance if there are any confusions. Fortunately, Google Translate is available to decode portions of my blog. The majority of the posts will be in English, with an occasional linguistic treat.

In the upcoming weeks, this blog will be full of tasty halo-halo ingredients. I have many notes and experiences to include since I returned to Malaysia on the 21st of April, 2011. They have been preserved in many places. Some of them are on paper. Others come from my mind. And the MOST valuable were taught to my heart by friendly Mr. Adversity.

Traveler's Notice: Malaysia's time zone is 14 (sometimes 15) hours ahead of Mountain Standard Time in the United States.

I am going to sleep soon, but my blog is lacking something. Something spiritually powerful!

Last night I was reading one of the last talks given by Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles that teaches us how to handle the not-so-nice Mr. Adversity. I would like to share a paragraph from the middle of the article:

Because Jesus Christ suffered greatly, He understands our suffering. He understands our grief. We experience hard things so that we too may have increased compassion and understanding for others.

The insight I gained from this article is that we should change our perspective concerning adversity to this:

Trials transform us into better disciples of the Savior because we understand more accurately how He felt and how other people feel. This enables us to serve Him better and better AND experience more and more joy because the pain has passed through us.

For the complete talk, please click the following link: Come What May, and Love It

Take care and good night!

CD Hall