If you don’t know what dropbox is, and you’re someone who has a desktop machine and a laptop and a flashdrive, you are in for a treat.  Dropbox gives you a 2 gig floating storage area out “in the cloud.”  (This goes up to 8 gig in 250 meg increments based on referrals, so please use my link to go check it out and thanks in advance https://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTQxOTkzNjU5 )

Now let’s get back to the subject at hand.  Thinking Rock (http://www.trgtd.com.au/) is a very solid GTD implementation.  I’m not going to get much into what Thinking Rock and GTD are; this article assumes that you are familiar with both and have been having issues with trying to use Thinking Rock on a USB key and would like a better way.

Ok, “better” may be too strong a word for what I’ve put together, let’s just call it “a USB free way”.

My biggest issue with using a USB key with thinking rock was that my settings were being saved to the java application directory on each machine that I was using.  Little things like what screen does TR open up in, what order the action screens are in, what columns are in the action screens.  This solution has fixed that for me.

Step one: Copy your TR directory to your Dropbox directory and change its name to insure that you don’t find yourself using a different directory without knowing about it.

In my case I use the following directory name:

C:\My Dropbox\TR-3.1.2_mba

Add 3 files to your bin directory (C:\My Dropbox\TR-3.1.2_mba\bin)

cmd_here.bat

cmd

trbat.bat

tr.exe -J-Duser.home=”C:\My Dropbox\TR-3.1.2_mba\data” -J-Dtr.datafile=”C:\My Dropbox\TR-3.1.2_mba\data\MalcolmAnderson.trx”

readme.txt

double click

cmd_here.bat

to open a cmd window in this directory

in the command window enter “trb” and tab to bring up trbat.bat

press the enter key to start thinking rock

When updating version number update the “default_userdir” setting in the etc\tr.conf file

default_userdir=”C:\My Dropbox\TR-3.1.2_mba_data/.thinkingrock/tr-3.1.2″

Step Two: Follow the instruction in the read me and edit the C:\My Dropbox\TR-3.1.2_mba\etc\tr.conf file

#default_userdir=”${HOME}/.thinkingrock/tr-3.1.2″

default_userdir=”C:\My Dropbox\TR-3.1.2_mba_data/.thinkingrock/tr-3.1.2″

By putting a hash mark (#) in front of the original line comments it out, retaining it for future reference.

[Notice the convoluted combination of forward slash (“/”) and backward slash (“\”)]

That’s all I do.  On running it the first time, the _yourinitials_data directory will be created.

For a final check, open up TR on one machine, and change the opening screen to process, or the roadmap or some other screen you don’t normally use on start up.  Then exit out of the program.

Now open up TR on your other machine.  It should have opened up on your new start page.

There you go, it’s done.

As a last note, if any hard core java configuration geeks want to give me another solution, I’ll be happy to try it out.  I’m open to installing a second java installation that is local to my dropbox, it was beyond my skills and I’m just happy that this works.

If you have figured out how you are going to accomplish your marketing goals then this should be a no-brainer.   If you have not figured out your marketing goals, then there is no help for you.

Who do you trust to get your job done?

All that’s left to do is join the let’s find out club and move forward.  I’m going to start with phpList.

Wish me luck.

[Break]

The install went easy enough, but it’s probably going to take me another hour to get things actually rolling.  I would have loved an install that fully got things going and at the end you had a 2 e-mail mail campaign that would be sent to the list admin as a test.  Oh well, hopefully I’ll get back to it before the end of the month.

Any other phpList admins out there?

System One – The Master Project List – Every project (defined as something you want to get done that requires more than 2 tasks, taking longer than 2 minutes) that you want to accomplish in your life.  All down on paper (or in a system somewhere)

System Two – The Filing System – Active projects, Reference files, Archives

System Three – Your Tickler System

System Four – Your Calendar

System Five – The Waiting On System

System Six – The Next Action List

System Seven – Your In-Basket

System Eight – Your Weekly Review

Your homework for the week:

1) Tell me what you would accomplish if you achieved “Stress-Free Productivity”

2) If you are already a GTD fan, tell me how your story of getting your systems to work together.

This is not just a rhetorical question.

If you are coaching someone, and that person is failing to complete their assignments, there is a good chance that your coachee has either lost connection to their vision, or their vision has expired.  Riding your coachee about the failure is pointless, they don’t care anymore.

Assignment failure is only a trip wire for noticing vision disconnection.  This is where you as a coach get to visibly and dramatically do your job; vision creation.

Lets assume that at one point in the past, your coachee had a vivid compelling vision of their future.  A future that was so bright they had to wear shades.  A vision that was so compelling that you had problems getting them to get enough sleep because they are so busy driving towards the fulfillment of their vision.

Now they don’t have that connection anymore.

So how do you get them back in touch with their vision?  How do you create one in the first place?

I’ll be coming back to this question, I think you’ll like my approach.  But in the mean time, what’s your approach?

Ну и чё с ними делать… Меня достали на моём блоге я устала вычищать…

I have no idea what is being said here, I don’t even know what language it’s in.  Is it spam or is it someone telling me how awesome and amazing my blog is.  I don’t know, and I don’t know what other people are doing with this.

Until further notice, if I get a post that is completely non-English, I will be marking it as spam.  If someone can offer me a good reason to have a different policy, I’m all ears.

Before you go, I’ve got a quick question for you while we’re here.

What is that question?  I’m glad you asked.

It’s really simple, “Why are you here at ‘How much success can you handle’?”  Are you looking to administer your wordpress site (cuz that’s what I seem to be talking about the most), or are you more interested in the nominal topic of this blog, which is taking the game of your life to the next level?  Either way, I thank you for being here.

As a quick warning, if you thought that this blog was going to be, “everything is rosy, all the time” then you thought wrong.  The road to success is full of pot-holes.  Deep, suspension destroying pot-holes.

I am involved in an organization called Toastmasters, and last week, my member speech blew chunks.   Toastmasters is a global organization dedicated to improving the art of public speaking.

Bottom line, this week, my speech was “good enough” it wasn’t horrible, I spoke, I was coherent, I had a minimum of distracting habits, but it wasn’t practiced, or polished.  It had no structure.  None.

It really had me thinking, where else am I “good enough”?  Where am I just phoning it in?  Conversely, where are you just phoning it in.  Where in your life and your business have you reached “good enough” and what could be possible if you were to take it up a notch to “good”?

I apologize to everyone who has been wanting to comment on my various posts but has not been able to.  Take a shot at subscribing to my blog, this should have the effect of allowing you comment with out being moderated.