January Update - Get Prepared

January had one theme with three activities for me: Jiu Jitsu training, working for HP, and studying for my property management license all revolved around getting prepared.

Jiu Jitsu
In preparing for our blue belt test, David and I have been training pretty hard. We've been going to class 3 nights a week, working out Saturday mornings, and putting in some personal time with our instructor on Sundays. We've been making great progress and should be ready for our test on February 5th.

Jessi has started running more in preparation for the half-marathon we'll be running in April. She's also been great about letting me train so much - I asked her to only encourage me to keep going and she's done a wonderful job of it.

Working for HP
January is the quiet before the storm at HP. February is when HP does all of it's long-term planning, which gets crazy. So I've been spending time improving my Excel tools and perfecting methodologies. That way when we get requests for 3 scenarios within a couple hours, it won't be a mad rush to get them done. The goal is flip the 80/20 rule. Normally I spend 80% of my data creating views and only 20% of my time actually looking at, and thinking about, the data. My hope (and we'll see how it goes), it to tip the process in favor of doing more actual analysis instead of data creation.

Jessi has also been working at her school and really enjoying it. She tries to remember at least one goofy thing one of her students does so she can share it with me - it's pretty hilarious.

Property Management Class
In order to manage other people's properties you have to be licensed. To be licensed you have to pass a test. Before you can take the test, you have to complete at least 60 hours worth of approved course work (and pay money for each step). So... Jessi and I are in the middle of completing our course work - I'm so thankful it's an online self-paced class. We're about a third of the way done. There are 30 sections, which take 2-4 hours each. It's amazing how hard it is to find them time when you work all day and train in jiu jitsu 5 days a week.

Jessi and I have been getting into great conversations over what we're learning. We go from talking about setting up client trust accounts to talking about what is, and is not, discrimination.



So, it's been a lot of preparing and working hard. Still, we do manage to find time to see fun things. Speaking of, here's another great How It Should Have Ended Video: Top Gun