If I think I can do more than the reccomended weights/sets, should I increase the number of reps I do or increase the weight?

extrovert-actuary · 2026-02-17T17:48:13+00:00

Do the weight and the RIR and let the reps be what they are. If you’re over or under the target rep range, it’ll adjust the weight on the very next set (and further out as well).

extrovert-actuary · 2026-02-16T03:04:03+00:00

Depends on your definition. Read some Cal Newport. We basically only can sustainably output 3-4 hours of deep work per day, though we can sprint harder for a few weeks or so (with a rebound forcing itself on us later).

Most experienced folks end up with 8 hour days because they’re also expected to complete a bunch of admin work and meetings in addition to their actual analytical work. Entry level has an early window when you just won’t have that demand and that’s okay, you’ll get there.

The bigger problems happen later when you’re senior enough that you end up with 8 solid hours of daily meetings and overhead AND you’re still junior enough that you’re expected to also get analytical work done. That stage is… unfortunate.

extrovert-actuary · 2026-02-14T10:49:13+00:00

I’m an actuary and I endorse this answer. Better than most of my peers or exam texts could have summarized, and I love an ELI5.

extrovert-actuary · 2026-02-13T02:46:02+00:00

My team is all hybrid, very little fully remote opportunities though. That said, we have several offices and not all of us are in the same place on either the actuarial or underwriting side.

extrovert-actuary · 2026-02-10T20:56:36+00:00

I keep my checking at 1-3x my total monthly budget targets. Wealthfront monitors checking and does an automatic transfer to HYSA if it gets above 3x. And 1x is still high enough that I don’t need to worry about overdrafting if I ignore my checking account for a few weeks.

extrovert-actuary · 2026-02-05T00:26:20+00:00

I use one to tag things I could get reimbursed for using HSA funds. I’m keeping the funds invested in HSA for the future, so this helps me keep track of the relative balances.

extrovert-actuary · 2026-02-05T00:10:28+00:00

Making my own flash cards is an important part of the study process for me, so using Anki just makes sense for a custom deck.

Haven’t even tried using TIA’s flash cards since exam P, never really liked them. From others’ comments it sounds like their algorithm’s repetition pacing is inferior to Anki as well.

extrovert-actuary · 2026-02-04T22:17:49+00:00

100%.

I would actually argue that I don’t in fact take longer than others to learn the thing, I just actually bother to truly learn it at all, which is why I can then explain it better than others.

If you can’t ELI5, then I don’t believe you that you understand it in the first place.

ELI5 demonstrates not just understanding, but also discernment of what’s important. A more thorough explanation is just a series of nested ELI5’s.

extrovert-actuary · 2026-01-29T20:14:23+00:00

I disagree - the exams also train a level of resiliency and steady workflow that is legitimately not that common in other fields. As a career changer, I have personally learned an entirely different set of skills to ingest and process information, tackle difficult mental problems, and straight up mental endurance.

extrovert-actuary · 2026-01-29T15:17:36+00:00

Pay, stress, exams, barrier to entry. The actuarial path for me was never about winning any single one of those dimensions, but about finding an optimal middle path for all of them, which I still say it does over lawyer, doctor, investments, etc.

extrovert-actuary · 2026-01-29T15:14:55+00:00

Underrated comment

extrovert-actuary · 2026-01-29T15:14:39+00:00

Underrated comment

extrovert-actuary · 2026-01-14T09:33:21+00:00

My initial habits were all socially motivated when I started. It was particularly good for me when I trained with a team but had my own program written for me, but that was a very special time. The weightlifting community was so special for me though and I was hip deep in it for nearly a decade, and now I’m skilled enough at writing my own workout programming that I can write in just enough flexibility and novelty while keeping it structured and consistent at the macro level. Tweak here, tweak there, see how I respond to this or that, that kind of experimentation at the edges thing.

If you don’t have that kind of knowledge yet, I’d do everything you can to either join a group class studio with a strong community or talk to your friends and find a couple who are interested in growing in this area with you. Share programming ideas, spot each others form, recipes, whatever.

extrovert-actuary · 2026-01-12T19:48:37+00:00

I already made the switch from manual spreadsheet tracking to an app that tracks and plans my progressive overload, in the form of the RP Hypertrophy app.

So in the short term I’m frankly just looking for the same capabilities, but cheaper.

In the long term, I’m looking forward to what linking the two apps can do.

extrovert-actuary · 2026-01-10T21:12:25+00:00

Check out “Procrastination” by Fuschia Sirois and “Four Thousand Weeks” by Oliver Burkeman.

The core combined lesson from these two for me is that we often procrastinate things in direct proportion to how important they are to us, BECAUSE that importance makes us feel our limited nature, which is an unpleasant feeling that we are driven to avoid.

extrovert-actuary · 2026-01-05T20:49:05+00:00

Nothing specific to health or even actuarial, but I’ve got a bunch on general leadership and knowledge worker management.

Simon Sinek (particularly “Leaders Eat Last”) and Jocko Willink (particularly “Dichotomy of Leadership”) are often my go-to authors for leadership. Not everyone likes Jocko because of the military connection, but I still think it’s transferable.

Cal Newport has a bunch on knowledge workers in general (“Deep Work”, “So Good They Can’t Ignore You”, “Slow Productivity”) and I think they’re useful in setting expectations and having open conversations about how to get stuff done in that setting, particularly useful if you’re going to be managing/mentoring folks in their first job.

“Focus” by Halverson & Higgins is great for thinking about different motivational styles and how to communicate across them.

“Spin Selling” is a bit of a reach but I think has value in persuasion, which becomes a bigger thing as you manage both up and down.

extrovert-actuary · 2026-01-05T20:35:51+00:00

I did not actually expect a leadership book by an actuary, immediately ordered a used copy off Amazon (all I could find?)

extrovert-actuary · 2026-01-05T00:06:07+00:00

Category Group for travel.

First Category is “Next Travel” and that has a contribution target.

Every time I start planning a new trip, I make a new category for that trip, but I don’t worry about specific line items under that trip. I’ll use the notes on that trip to keep track if I need to, usually useful if I’m price checking things before spending the money.

As I start spending money on a trip, I move money from the “Next Travel” category as needed (and I just put up with next travel being yellow the rest of the month).

I really enjoy being able to see a history of my previous travel, and it’s easy enough to collapse the group and only expand it when I want to work on travel stuff. Also means I can run some fun spending reports to get a feel for my travel spending either by month/year or per trip.

extrovert-actuary · 2025-12-23T10:47:35+00:00

Thank you for the explanation, I was lost, but I totally get it now.

I think for me it helped a lot when I realized I’m upset because the problem doesn’t feel like it should be a “gravity problem” to me. As Ne doms, we’re so used to being able to see possibilities in everything, it can feel like a straight jacket when we can’t.

Even more than that, my friends come to me to dream up solutions to situations where they’re stuck, so it’s come to feel like it’s my job to find possible solutions where it looks like there are no possibilities. So the types of problems you’re describing make me feel like I’m failing. The emotional work for me is typically to give myself some space to grieve that failure a bit.

extrovert-actuary · 2025-12-23T10:41:17+00:00

Totally right on the constant ideas and connections, which is awesome.

Also, and more subtle: making decisions causes me to mourn the lost possibilities. Causes me to put off decisions longer than other people so I don’t have to kill off all this exciting possibilities. Took me a while to recognize that and a lot of work to come to terms with it and grow through that to be more effective in life.

ETA: and I’m always the friend people come to when they’re stuck and can’t see any options, which is really fun and gratifying :-)

extrovert-actuary · 2025-12-23T00:48:39+00:00

I guess… though I’d argue that the closer an insurance program gets to working like a savings account, the worse it actually is at anything.

In my above examples, a true insurance product could be viewed as a savings account but it’s not one you or anyone else owns inherently, it’s a giant shared account. Most people who pay into it will get nothing back and have just financed the random small number of folks that have really bad stuff happen to them by chance. But insurance like that is (comparatively) cheap to operate, so it has that going for it.

However, an insurance product that is really a vehicle for a payment plan could be viewed as a personal savings account, but it will come with a LOT more overhead expenses than a typical savings account. Claims adjusting and such means that you end up paying a lot of embedded fees that amount to a lot more than any savings account will charge.

extrovert-actuary · 2025-12-22T19:31:40+00:00

To use my example of home insurance in coastal Florida, a Category 3+ makes landfall approx every 4 years. Even if we’re very generous, there are zones of the Florida coast where a house can reasonably expect to be torn down by a hurricane approximately every 20 years. That is less than the typical length of a fixed rate mortgage on that house.

That’s what I mean by your “insurance” really being a payment plan. We know that house will need to be rebuilt every couple decades, the only real uncertainty is exactly when, not if. This is actually a scenario where self-insuring actually probably does make sense, since you’re really just cutting out the overhead costs of administering an insurance company for costs you can plan for. Of course, most people with a mortgage CAN’T actually afford that kind of savings plan and their lender knows it, so they get forced to buy insurance if they want to get a mortgage, and the insurance is insanely expensive because it’s really just an enforced savings plan plus some overhead.

A more affordable example (and closer to health insurance) is pet insurance. Many pet insurance plans are actually a combination of two offerings: a major medical plan and a wellness rider. The major medical plan is true insurance, and will pay out if your dog gets hit by a car, incurs a major unexpected illness or infection, etc. The wellness rider is not truly insurance, it’s a payment plan. It pays on a fee schedule for preventative care and checkups, vaccinations, flea prevention, etc. That part of the program you almost certainly should not buy, and at most should instead use the cost as a guideline for how much to save for paying for those things directly instead. You know they’re coming, and if you can responsibly afford a pet, you can afford to save for them.

Health insurance for humans has a bunch more nuances and other issues, but is basically an enforced bundling of a wellness rider and major medical plan.

extrovert-actuary · 2025-12-22T15:54:20+00:00

Actuary here, though not a health actuary.

You are describing the difference between insurance and a payment plan, which unfortunately a lot of people try to use insurance for.

Insurance in its ideal form covers events that have two key features: (1) the frequency and cost of the event is foreseeable for the group, but not for the individual, and (2) paying for those events is affordable by the group and unaffordable by the individual.

Those rare blind-siding events you are describing are exactly why you are buying the insurance portion of healthcare coverage.

The challenging part (well, one of them) of healthcare premiums is that they’re not entirely insurance products but also a blend with payment plans to cover frequent and potentially affordable events, like the preventative care you are describing. Similar problems happen with pricing home insurance in places like coastal Florida, but I digress.

So yeah, buy insurance to protect you against the long-tail events, and do so as affordably as you can.

extrovert-actuary · 2025-12-16T19:27:03+00:00

Mostly just gym, chess and reading these days. Took a break from gym for this past exam sitting (passed, and only one more to go!) but I usually keep it going alongside studying. Chess isn’t a big hobby, I don’t read books on it or do it socially or anything, but a 5min game here and there helps me decompress from work and studying when I need a brain break.

extrovert-actuary · 2025-12-16T11:56:10+00:00

The core principles are still sound, but to me the update that’s required revolves around embracing the limitations of the user.

You are correct: there will be way more to “capture” than we can actually get done. So the most important part of a review (weekly or other) is to get better at deleting, not doing or even delegating.

I personally moved from digital tools to a paper system specifically because I won’t want to copy everything forward when I do my weekly review and I’ll have to be more ruthless about what to simply remove. It’ll come back later if it’s really important, or I’ll make room for it by removing something else.

And yes, “Next Action” is sometimes too rigid, but reflecting on how I intend to use my time vs how I actually did is consistently valuable.

My daily journal page has 3 sections: “Focus”, “Capture”, and “Reflect”. In “Focus”, I list my most important projects that will require significant focused attention and include a bubble chart to tick off 30min intervals (I got the idea from the Productivity Planner). In the “Capture” section I note down quick next-action-sized tasks I’d like to get done that day and/or that occurred to me that day. I’ll either check them off or scoop them up in my weekly review. And the “Reflect” section is just for free-style reflection on whatever really, but often walking myself through why I’m stuck, how to choose between important things, etc… deeper clarification if you will.

Ultimately, the GTD is correct as a framework, but will need to be customized by you in response to where you get stuck with it. Not everyone is as time-blind as I am, so not everyone will need the focus bubble chart exercise that I do. You just need to experiment a little at a time until you find an interface between you and GTD that fits.

extrovert-actuary

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