Investments in industrial development and attracting of investors are key goals in this year, experts say.
Privatization Agency Director Vladislav Cvetković and Serbia Investment and Export Promotion Agency (SIEPA) Director Božidar Laganin say that the main goals of the two agencies in 2011 will be to attract investors.
Serbia’s task in 2011 is to gain an EU candidate status, Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremić has stated.
He added that other tasks were preservation of peace and stability in the region and establishment of the best possible relations with our neighbors.
The goal of the dialogue with Priština is reconciliation of Kosovo Albanians and Serbs, said Serbian Prime Minister Mirko Cvetković.
He told Czech daily Lidove Noviny that “the issue of the recognition of Kosovo is set aside for nowâ€.
RED Hat Enterprise Linux 6, the long anticipated release of its operating system, stressing its cloud features, performance improvements, and energy savings is finally hitting the market. – Red Hat launched Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 to great fanfare on Nov. 10, stressing performance, Green IT, and virtualization capabilities.
Emphasizing that this was not just a product release, RHEL 6 is the “culmination” of 10 years of learning and partnering,” said Paul Cormier, Red Hats executi…
Serbia’s goal is to start negotiations on the EU membership in a year, Serbian President Boris Tadić said. He added that Serbia would not be hindered on the EU integration path for its insufficient cooperation with the Hague Tribunal.
President Boris Tadić says he has done everything in his power to make Serbia become the driving force of positive changes in the region.
Speaking on Tuesday at a conference on Southeast Europe in Stuttgart, Germany, he reiterated that the country’s EU membership is a strategic goal of his policy.
Microsoft and Research In Motion will find themselves in competition this fall over the consumer market, with the respective releases of Windows Phone 7 and the BlackBerry Torch 9800. Both companies need more robust app stores and broad audience appeal to succeed. – Research In Motion used the Aug. 3 launch of the BlackBerry
Torch 9800 to position itself as more consumer-centric: during a high-profile
presentation in New York City, executive after executive touted the devices
multimedia and social-networking capabilities not to mention what the company
hope…
Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremić said that Serbia does not want a frozen conflict in Kosovo and hopes for new negotiations. “The clearer the conclusion of the UN General Assembly, the greater the chances for this process to end successfully will be,†he said.
Beneath an unassuming as well as sweet veneer one can see a driven artist, Taylor Swift, who managed to achieve her goals since childhood.
Recalling her childhood, she said that she had been singing obsessively, randomly, as well as obnoxiously for a long time. Even her parents have videos of her when she was 3 years [...]
Not long ago, my daily life was in really bad shape. I was sleeping anywhere between 3am to 6am on average, and on the really bad days I wouldn’t sleep at all. Because I slept late, I would wake up late. Subsequently, my day would start off late, which meant I was busy “playing catch-up” and being late for my appointments. My diet was horrendous – I was eating lots of junk food and snacks at night to stay awake. It got worse month after month, and I didn’t want to continue on. I needed to revamp my lifestyle!
Image ©
I picked out 9 habits I wanted to cultivate for the next 21 days, such as: (1) Sleeping at/before 12am, (2) Waking up at 5am, (3) Reading a book or listening to a podcast at least once a day, (4) Meditating, (5) Being timely for my appointments (6) Even eating a raw food diet! #6 might be a bit of an overkill for some people, but hey – since it was just for 21 days, I thought I might as well try something different for a change.
I’m extremely happy to report that nearly all my habits have stuck. My life has become significantly organized. I wake up early, I get to all my appointments early/on time, I get my work done, I meditate, I’m eating raw, and I sleep on time. Out of the 9 habits, 8 habits stuck, while 1 habit was let go because I realized it wasn’t something I wanted to work on for now. Compared to my previous lifestyle, this has been a total 180 degree turnaround.
Some people might think this positive change is exclusive to me, that perhaps I have some incredible determination, persistence or discipline to pull this off. I don’t want to disappoint, but it’s not. In fact, truth be told, I consider myself a very undisciplined person. What I do have though, are 6 specific tips that have been critical in enabling my lifestyle change. These have helped my new habits stick.
If you have been trying to cultivate new habits with little success, then you might find these very useful. These habits are not rocket science – they are easy to understand, apply and have worked tremendously for me.
Here they are:
Address the root cause of the issue, not the effect. Desperately battling with yourself every morning to wake up at 5:30am is to address the effect. Understanding why you keep failing to wake up at 5:30am is to address the cause.
For example, I couldn’t wake up early for the longest time ever, and all I kept doing is to keep trying and failing the next day. This would continue on for several months until I finally realized it was just going nowhere. I began to start analyzing my situation to understand why I couldn’t wake up early, through a self-questioning process. I probed into the situation, and asked myself “why” this was happening to drill down to the root cause.
Below is an example of the drilling process:
Getting down to this root cause helped me realize two things (1) All our habits are tied to one another (sleeping time, waking time, timeliness) (2) I underestimate the time taken to finish the tasks (and subsequently overestimate how fast I can do those tasks). Many times, I would target to finish multiple projects in 1 day, which wasn’t possible at all.
This meant that to make my waking early habit stick, (1) I need to change habits that are related to waking early (see Tip #2) and (2) I have to be more realistic in my planning. Rather than stuff in so many tasks for a day and not finishing them, now I go for a challenging yet achievable schedule and complete my tasks accordingly.
Keep asking why to drill down to the root reason. Once you get to the real cause, you can immediately resolve the issue.
Our habits are not standalone; they are interlinked. Some habits have a stronger linkage with each other than others. For example, sleeping early and waking early are obviously linked to each other, while sleeping early and reading a book a day might not be so closely related. If you want to cultivate a habit, identify the other habits that are tied with it and make a holistic change. These habits will reinforce each other to help make the change seamless.
For example, my new habits to: (a) Wake up early at 5am (b) Sleep before 12am (c) Be on time (d) Meditate (e) Have raw food diet are all interlinked.
Having a schedule lets you know when you are on or off track for your habits. For the 1st day of my new lifestyle, I did a full-day planning and continued thereafter for all other days.
What I do is this:
With all this planning done, when the next day comes all I have to do is to follow the schedule to a tee. I keep a close watch on the timing to ensure I’m on time. 5 minutes before it’s up, I do a wrap up and start transiting to the next task on the list.
The beauty of having a precise schedule is it helps me know exactly when I’m taking more time than desired, and this helps me work on being more efficient. There are some timings which absolutely have to be protected, such as my sleeping/waking times and appointment times, so in that sense the time allocated on my tasks are fixed. That means I have to work more efficiently.
It may seem like a hassle, but it really isn’t. It just takes me about 10 minutes to get each day’s schedule done. Not surprisingly, I have allocate time in my daily schedule to do my scheduling for the next day (11-11:10pm). All you have to do is create a template once, and then you can reapply this template for the other days. There will be similar items across all out days that can be reapplied, such as waking/breakfast/commuting/working/dinner/sleeping times, so it’s really very straight forward.
If you don’t plan for when exactly to get the habit done and instead just arbitrarily say that you want it to be done sometime today, then there’s a very high chance it might not get done. This is why most people’s habits don’t stick. Other things will invariably keep popping in and you’d engage them without realizing it and throw your schedule off track. From there, other things get pushed back and you never get to carry out your habit.
I found it’s extremely motivating to stay ahead. Waking up early at 5am means I’m ahead of most people in the world (and myself too, if I were to stick to my old schedule), and that motivates me to work fast and stay ahead. What helps me continue this momentum is that I end my tasks earlier and start the next task before the scheduled timing. By ensuring I stay ahead of my schedule, I’m naturally motivated to work on all the things I have planned, including my habits. There’s no resistance to get them started at all.
If a task is taking more time than needed, then I make a choice. Either I:
This decision-making process is important, because otherwise you will end up playing catch-up for the rest of the day, which affects all your planned habits/activities. Subsequently, it also affects your will to maintain your habits. Stay ahead of your schedule and you will find it easier to stay motivated.
Tracking keeps you accountable to your habits. I have a whiteboard in my bedroom which I use to track my habits. On the whiteboard, I drew a large table, split by days (21 days to cultivate a new habit) and by habits. For the days where I do the habit, I will give it a check. For the days I don’t, I make a cross. It’s very satisfying to do the checks every time you finish a habit! You can also track your habits on paper or in your computer.
Here are some great habit trackers online:
Engagement can occur on 2 levels – (a) Active engagement, where you inform your friends who might be interested in and cultivate the habit together with them or (b) Passive engagement, where you let others know about your plans and having them morally support you.
I had both forms of support in my habit change. 2 days before I started my lifestyle revamp program, I posted an article on my blog, The Personal Excellence Blog, on the new 21-day Lifestyle Revamp Program I was taking on. I wrote in detail about the rationale behind the program, the benefits, the habits I was taking on and how I was going to achieve my goals. I also invited them to join me too in cultivating new habits. Much to my pleasant surprise, many readers responded in enthusiasm on new habits they wanted to cultivate and joined me in the 21-days of change.
For my raw food diet, I told my mom that I’m just eating fruits and salads for the next 3 weeks, and she began to stock up the house with fruits like bananas, grapes and strawberries. In fact, I just finished a box of strawberries from typing this post. Yesterday, I went to watch How To Train A Dragon with my friend, and filled him in on my raw food diet. He then kept a look out for the restaurants we could dine in for that night. In the end I had warm baby spinach salad for dinner. My first time having it – can’t say I like it, but it’s nice for a change :D.
Don’t feel that you’re alone in your habit change because you aren’t. There are always people around you who are more than willing to support you.
My new habits have pretty much been integrated into my daily life now. Everything runs on auto-pilot and it feels like I’ve been doing this for a long while. My personal tips above have worked tremendously for myself, so while they may look simple and straightforward, don’t underestimate them. Try them out for yourself and let me know how your new habits are coming along for you.
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I’m Celes and I write at The Personal Excellence Blog, where I give my best advice on achieving personal excellence. If you like this article, you might enjoy reader favorites like 101 Things To Do Before You Die and Are You Sleepwalking Your Life Away?. Get my RSS feed directly and add me on Twitter @celestinechua.
With the first quarter in the books it’s time to look back on the results.
Family is going very well, there were a lot of things to get in order with my son, and most of it has been fairly straightforward. I’ve also continued duties as the family IT department and everyone can still access the [...]
President Boris Tadić said that Serbia’s goal is to receive candidate status for EU membership either by the end of the year or in early 2011. After meeting with EU Security and Foreign Policies Chief Catherine Ashton in Brussels, Tadić said that cooperation with the Hague Tribunal must be completed in order for this to happen, which means that fugitives Ratko Mladić and Goran Hadžić must be arrested.
I’m willing to bet that there’s something you’ve always wanted to do.
It could be that you’ve always wanted to write a novel. Maybe you want to visit Africa or want to see the Northern Lights. Perhaps you’d love to open a little coffee shop or brasserie in your neighbourhood or maybe you’ve had brainwave for a neat little product that just might change the world.
You’re not alone. We all have things we dream about and things we’d love to do, and it’s rare that these things ever see the light of day.
Fear steps in – sometimes in the guise of practicality and sometimes wearing the hat of playing it safe – and provides all kinds of reasons why you can’t have what you want.
So you persuade yourself that it’s a pipe dream and that it could never actually happen because you wouldn’t know where to start, couldn’t afford it and it probably wouldn’t work anyway.  You lose faith in your ability to make your dream reality, and lose a little faith in yourself in the process.
The tragedy is that the more you apply a filter to what you wish for and train yourself to think small, the less confident you become in your ability to do anything that matters very much. Worse than that, you set yourself tiny dreams that aren’t hard to reach, and you reach them.
But hang on a second. What if those big things were possible?  What if you really could make some or all of it happen?  What if it turned out that you did have what it takes to see something special come to life?  Wouldn’t that be something you’d leap at?
Here are my 3 steps to doing what you’ve always wanted to do.
First of all you need to do some leg work. Investigate what might be needed to get going, look for resources that can inform and help, seek out other people who might have done something similar and talk to those who’ve been there, done that.
There’s no risk here – it’s simply learning about what’s involved, picking up the key strategies that have been used successfully before and gathering together the ideas and resources that you believe will help you to get things moving.
Write down all the questions you have about what you want to do and then go answer them. It’s possible that as you open things up you find that the reality isn’t what you expected and that it isn’t really your thing after all. That’s fine – now you know. But the opportunity to answer the questions you have and fill in those blanks is invaluable, and you might just find yourself getting pretty darn excited about what you’re discovering.
You’ve opened it up and answered a heap of questions you had – now you need to make your choice. There are 2 ways to help with this decision making.
Once you’ve figured those 2 things out, make your choice and commit to it. That commitment is what will carry you through, and it’s an attitude and a way of behaving that shapes your experience and behaviour as you go forwards.
When you’ve made your choice to start, do one thing today.  Just one thing.  Then do one more thing tomorrow.
That’s all.
Do one thing, then another, then another (no matter how big or small) and you’ll make progress. By doing just one thing a day you’ll be 365 steps forward a year from now. Don’t get overwhelmed with the apparent size or complexity of what you’re tackling. No task is bigger than your capability and you just need to chunk it down into bite-sized pieces and tackle each one in turn.
And if something doesn’t turn out the way you expected or hoped, don’t sweat it. You have the next day to try things a different way or tackle things from another direction. You’ll never be able to control how everything turns out so don’t beat yourself up – just keep checking where you are, making your choice and taking another step.
These 3 steps can be applied universally to do the things you’ve always wanted. So tell me, what do you want?
Image: source
Steve Errey almost died at age 5 as he choked on a grape. Today, Steve is a leading confidence coach for entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs, with a reputation for talking sense and getting results. Read more at The Confidence Guy and follow him on Twitter. He still loves grapes, despite the risks.
Joining the EU is Serbia’s main goal, and there is no EU member-state that is against that, says Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremić. In an interview published by the Madrid-based El Mundo newspaper, the chief of Serbia’s diplomacy also said that Serbia and all of the Western Balkans are of great geo-political significance for the EU, “which cannot count on its own stability without the Balkans”.
India beat arch rival Pakistan 4-1 in the Hero Honda Hockey World Cup at Major Dhayan Chand Stadium in New Delhi on Sunday night.
In the early minutes of second-half of the match, Prabhjot Singh scored the third goal.
Sandeep Singh gave India an upper hand as he scored the second goal for the hosts in the [...]
Some people like to cooperate with others to achieve their goals, while others prefer to chase their dreams on their own.  I find that involving mutually committed partners in my pursuits is intensely rewarding – especially mastermind groups.  I’ve strengthened my friendships, made measurable progress towards my goals, and continue to grow thanks to the support I’ve received in my mastermind groups over the years.
In this article I’ll lay out what a mastermind group is, the benefits of having a mastermind group, and concrete strategies and actions you can take to start your own mastermind group today.
The first place I came across the concept of a mastermind was in Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich. Â In it, Hill describes a mastermind group as:
The coordination of knowledge and effort of two or more people, who work toward a definite purpose, in the spirit of harmony.
In my experience, my mastermind groups have formed around multiple people striving for a common purpose – from goals as small as college admissions and improving fitness, to as large as your entire life.
Starting a mastermind group is deceptively simple in its steps:
Two words: Â mutual beneficiaries. Â Any member in your mastermind group should not only be able to provide you with sound feedback and advice, but should be able to receive some benefit from your feedback as well. Some qualities I look for in a participant include:
I like to limit mastermind groups to between 3 and 5 people. Â This keeps meeting short, in depth and on point. Â You can experiment with more or less, but I recommend starting with 2 or 3 if this is your first time with a mastermind group.
If you’re ready to start a mastermind group, you may want some very basic structure help you in the beginning. Â These three questions never fail to get my mastermind groups off to a great start. Â As your group evolves, you’ll come up with your own agenda and questions that you’d like each member to answer – but if you don’t know where to begin, this is a great place to start:
What do you think? Â Have you run a mastermind group before? Â Do you have additional tips to share, or perhaps pitfalls to avoid?
Sid Savara is a a lifehacking fanatic. Visit Sid’s website for more information about how to get motivated and analysis driven personal development. Sign up for his newsletter and pick up a copy of his free motivational quotes book, The Little Book Of Big Motivational Quotes.
In honour of the 2010 African Cup of Nations, we bring you our top five websites for all things football related. Goal.com www.goal.com This international website, which also has an Indian and Arabic edition, is great for breaking news – be it actual news stories or rumours. Goal.com is
Deputy PM Božidar Äelić stated on Thursday that Serbia’s aim was to attract USD 3bn of direct foreign investments in 2010. Äelić is in Paris where he s attending a two-day conference in Paris entitled “New world, new capitalism”.
I’m a few days late, but with the new year upon us, I’ve decided to inaugurate a new Moleskine. The old one is… well, it’s not good. The binding is broken, pages are out, and it’s just about full anyway. Plus, I’ve got a saucy new Moleskine in fire engine red that’s eager to get in the game.
Since I make a big deal about using a Moleskine (or similar notebook) as an always-with-you productivity tool, I thought I’d share exactly how I set mine up. It’s not super-complicated, but it might give an idea of how a simple pad of paper can hold together all the strains of an insanely complex life.
My strategy is simple: Make it as easy as possible to pull the thing out, use it, and put it away. No messing around to find the right section, no page numbers, nothing fancy. A few tabs, judicious use of the bookmark and elastic strap, and a good fine-tipped pen. And that’s it.
One of the greatest inventions of the 20th century was – ok, I overstate myself. Still, Post-It Index Tabs go with Moleskine notebooks like biscotti goes with coffee. Usually sold in assortments of three colors, these little plastic tabs are a little under an inch long and are coated on one end with Post-It sticky stuff so you can easily add tabs to any piece of paper or card stock.
I use two per Moleskine. The first one goes a little past halfway into the book, the second about a dozen or so pages back from the end. That makes three sections:
The first section starts on page 1, so doesn’t need an identifying tab. This is an ever-growing list of next actions. I’ve tried using contexts in my paper to-do list, but it just gets in the way – I never know what to do with the next task after a page marked “@phone†or “@computer†is full. It certainly defeats the point to have to flip back and forth to find the right context to add a new task to.
I used to have a separate section for notes, but I don’t anymore. What I do instead is this: tasks go on the right-hand page, notes on the left-hand page. And I do a lot of notes – I brainstorm post ideas, outline posts I intend to work on soon, jot addresses and phone numbers, draw maps and write directions, and on and on.
There is one right-hand page that’s not for notes, usually the first one. This I designate for “Someday/Maybeâ€. I just don’t run into the same problem that contexts give me – running out of room on the page – because I guess I don’t use Someday/maybe all that much. In any case, I’ve never filled the page before needing a new Moleskine.
The first tab (which means the second section) is for projects. On the first page of the section, the one with the tab on it, I keep a running list of all the projects I’m working on. The next couple of pages are blank, so I can continue the list when the first page gets full. A few pages in, I start pages for each project, usually just lists of tasks and random ideas I want to remember.
On the back of the first page, I write short-term goals. I have a simple formula: “By [DATE] I will have [GOAL]â€. I typically set goals for 1 month, 3 months, and (maybe) 6 months in the future, so in this notebook, I’ll have something like “By February 15th, I will have…â€, “By April 15th, I will have…†and (maybe) “By July 15th, I will have…†Then I revisit this page every so often to gauge my progress and set new goals.
The last section is for pieces of information I might need on the go: logins for my utilities, my Google Voice number (I can never remember it!), and other random but occasionally-useful stuff.
My Moleskine lives in my back pocket. As I said, the goal is that when I need to us it, whether to check something, write down a task, or cross something off, it can happen instantly. Both the bookmark and the elastic strap are drafted into service of this primary goal.
Usually, the sewn-in bookmark marks the first page under “Next actions†that I can write in, and the elastic strap is wrapped around the first blank page under “Projectsâ€. If – and this happens very rarely – if the notes and tasks in the “Next actions†section get too far out-of-whack, whether because I’ve taken a bunch of notes recently and gotten several pages ahead of the last page of tasks, or vice versa, I’ll use the bookmark and strap to mark the last pages of tasks and notes separately.
Although the Pilot G-2 is the time-honored companion to the Moleskine, my current favorite pen for my Moleskine is the Sharpie Retractable Fine-Point pen, a fat click-pen with a fiber-tip that lets me write super-small (thus maximizing the usefulness of a pocket-sized notebook).
And that’s the whole system. Like I said, simple, but it works. And because it works with minimal effort, I actually use it. Every. Single. Day.
Do you have any special tricks that help you get the most out of a pocket notebook? How do you set yours up? Let’s hear it!
Dustin M. Wax is a freelance writer and project manager at Stepcase Lifehack. He can be reached though his freelancing site at DustinWax.com</a., where his various projects can be viewed. When he's not writing, he teaches anthropology and gender studies in Las Vegas, NV. He is the author of Don’t Be Stupid: A Guide to Learning, Studying, and Succeeding at College.
Follow him on Twitter: @dwax.
