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New Year's Career Resolutions You Should Make
It's resolution time again. Instead of making the same old difficult-to-stick-to promises, like losing weight or quitting smoking, use the New Year to take stock of your career.
Addressing career concerns might make you more fulfilled on a daily basis. If you make the resolutions wisely by setting small, achievable goals, you're likely to feel particularly rewarded.

The first step: Consider what your career goals are and examine whether you're on track to meet them. "Are you happy with your job and your career," asks Wendy Enelow, a career consultant in Virginia who has written several books on résumés. "I'm not saying 'Are you making money?' But are you happy? Do you enjoy going to work on Monday mornings?" The time to ask this question is the last week in December or the third week of January -- because nobody wants to go back to work after the holiday break.
If the answer is yes, that's great. But you should still be at least a passive job-seeker. Update your resume and pay attention to your industry, so you're not totally blind-sided if there's an economic downturn or some other major change in the job market. Also, this makes it easier to fully hop into job-seeking mode if you suddenly need to look for a new position. Have a general sense of who is hiring and what jobs are open.
Also, everyone should have a long-term career plan. This will help you figure out where you want to be in the next few years, so you can start thinking about how to get there. What do you have to learn, and who should you meet to fulfill the goal? Also, recognize that things change, and so should your career plan -- it shouldn't be stagnant.

If you're not happy at work, ask yourself: What is it that my job lacks? What is it I actually want to do?
Your dissatisfaction might stem from the fact that your job doesn't allow you to do anything else. Enelow encourages clients to consider where on their priority list work fits in. For some people, work is the top priority; for others, it's third or fourth. If you want to spend more time with family and friends, but your job is all-encompassing, it might be time to rethink your job choice.
Whatever the reason, get in touch with your professional network. Use the New Year as an excuse to touch base via e-mail or by sending a card. Send a less formal note asking how your contacts' holidays were. Then say, "I had time over the holidays to think about my career, and as such, I've confidentially decided to explore new opportunities. I wanted to know if you know of anyone in the industry who I might want to know."
Enelow recommends sending a cover letter and resume to headhunters specifically in your field. "If a recruiter has an immediate opportunity, they will get in touch," she says. "For passive job seekers, it's a way of getting into the system, because recruiters will scan them into their database. They're in the system if an opportunity arises."
Those that are content at work should still consider their next step. Ask for honest feedback from your supervisor, peers and subordinates. This is an ideal way to hear what you're good at and what you need to improve on. "It's called '360 feedback,' and that's where the true results really come," says Stephen Harap, a management and leadership coach at Deloitte and Touche.
Know where you need to improve, because working on your weak points will actually help you get to the next level. "The time to get good at something is before you get that next role," says Harap.
Perhaps you don't know what that next level is. That's when it's time to chat with your supervisor for input. It's as simple as saying, "I'd love to have a conversation about what my career goals are. Am I on the right track?"
This is also a good tactic because you can ask your manager to become a partner in getting a promotion. He or she can suggest the necessarily skill sets and ways to master them, such as the books to read, online training or even classes.
Like any resolution, the key is moderation. After you've assessed your career, select one or two goals to achieve. As you check them off, add new ones.18.01.2008World chess champion Bobby Fischer dies- Bobby Fischer, the reclusive American chess master who became a Cold War icon when he dethroned the Soviet Union's Boris Spassky as world champion in 1972, has died. He was 64.ischer died Thursday in a Reykjavik hospital, his spokesman, Gardar Sverrisson, said. There was no immediate word on the cause of death.Born in Chicago and raised in Brooklyn, Robert James Fischer was a U.S. chess champion at 14 and a grand master at 15. He beat Spassky in a series of games in Reykjavik to claim America's first world chess championship in more than a century.The event had tremendous symbolic importance, pitting the intensely individualistic young American against a product of the grim and soulless Soviet Union.It also was marked by Fischer's odd behavior — possibly calculated psychological warfare against Spassky — that ranged from arriving two days late to complaining about the lighting, TV cameras, the spectators, even the shine on the table.Spassky said in a brief phone call from France, where he lives, that he was "very sorry" to hear of Fischer's death.Former Russian chess champion Garry Kasparov said Fischer's conquest of the chess world in the 1960s was "a revolutionary breakthrough" for the game.But Fischer's reputation as a chess genius soon was eclipsed by his idiosyncrasies. He lost his world title in 1975 after refusing to defend it against Anatoly Karpov. He dropped out of competitive chess and largely out of view, emerging occasionally to make erratic and often anti-Semitic comments, although his mother was Jewish."The tragedy is that he left this world too early, and his extravagant life and scandalous statements did not contribute to the popularity of chess," Kasparov told The Associated Press.Fischer lived in secret outside the United States but emerged in 1992 to confront Spassky again, in a highly publicized match in Yugoslavia. Fischer beat Spassky 10-5 to win $3.35 million.The U.S. government said Fischer's playing the match violated U.N. sanctions against Yugoslavia, imposed for Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic's role in fomenting war in the Balkans.Over the years, Fischer gave occasional interviews with a radio station in the Philippines, often digressing into anti-Semitic rants and accusing American officials of hounding him.He praised the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, saying America should be "wiped out," and described Jews as "thieving, lying bastards." His mother was Jewish.He also announced he had abandoned chess in 1996 and launched a new version in Argentina, "Fischerandom," a computerized shuffler that randomly distributes chess pieces on the back row of the board at the start of each game.Fischer claimed it would bring the fun back into the game and rid it of cheats.In July 2004, Fischer was arrested in Japan and threatened with extradition to the United States to face sanctions-busting charges. He spent nine months in custody before the dispute was resolved when Iceland — a chess-mad nation and site of his greatest triumph — granted him citizenship.Fischer told reporters that he was finished with a chess world he regarded as corrupt, and sparred with U.S. journalists who asked about his anti-American tirades."The United States is evil. There's this axis of evil. What about the allies of evil — the United States, England, Japan, Australia? These are the evildoers," Fischer said.In his final years, Fischer railed against the chess establishment, alleging that the outcomes of many top-level chess matches were decided in advance.Instead, he championed his concept of random chess."I don't play the old chess," he told reporters upon arrival in Iceland. "But obviously if I did, I would be the best."23.1.2008Work-related stress can kill, study findsWork really can kill you, according to a study on Wednesday providing the strongest evidence yet of how on-the-job stress raises the risk of heart disease by disrupting the body's internal systems.The findings from a long-running study involving more than 10,000 British civil servants also suggest stress-induced biological changes may play a more direct role than previously thought, said Tarani Chandola, an epidemiologist at University College London."This is the first large-scale population study looking at the effects of stress measured from everyday working life on heart disease," said Chandola, who led the study. "One of the problems is people have been skeptical whether work stress really affects a person biologically."Heart disease is the world's leading cause of death. It is caused by fatty deposits that harden and block arteries, high blood pressure which damages blood vessels, and other factors.The researchers measured stress among the civil servants by asking questions about their job demands such as how much control they had at work, how often they took breaks, and how pressed for time they were during the day.The team conducted seven surveys over a 12-year period and found chronically stressed workers -- people determined to be under severe pressure in the first two of the surveys -- had a 68 percent higher risk of developing heart disease.The link was strongest among people under 50, Chandola said."This study adds to the evidence that the work stress-coronary heart disease association is causal in nature," the researchers wrote in the European Heart Journal.Behavior and biological changes likely explain why stress at work causes heart disease, Chandola said. For one, stressed workers eat unhealthy food, smoke, drink and skip exercise -- all behaviors linked to heart disease.In the study, stressed workers also had lowered heart rate variability -- a sign of a poorly-functioning weak heart -- and higher-than-normal levels of cortisol, a "stress" hormone that provides a burst of energy for a fight-or-flight response.Too much cortisol circulating in the blood stream can damage blood vessels and the heart, Chandola said."If you are constantly stressed out these biological stress systems become abnormal," Chandola said