We are excited to announce our new Flashcards app is now available on the iOS App Store! We also put together a short video of the app’s features.
I personally really enjoyed working on this project, and we are eager to hear your feedback. This version is only the beginning, and we have more features planned. The Android version is also extremely close and open for beta testing.
First off, 90% is kind of a made up number. What am I talking about? Well, this is more of a mind hack than anything, but one way to help avoid the pitfall of over-spending time on minutia and very fine technical details is to try to target a “90%” understanding of the concepts on your first pass through a fellowship exam syllabus.
I can’t stress enough that you don’t have to become an expert in the syllabus material to pass (or even get a 10). One classic way that people fall behind schedule is spending an extra day (or week) to move their understanding from 90% to 100% on a specific reading, especially for the more technical topics on the syllabus. In other words, that last 10% can be very time-expensive to attain. In your career, it is well worth getting to 100%, but for the exam, that last 10% can kill you.
If this seems ridiculous and silly, just ignore this blog post and keep studying, but hopefully you get the point: get as much of an understanding of the core concepts on your first pass over each lesson within time allotted, then move on to the next.
In the end, you are FAR more likely to pass the exam if you are 80–90% proficient in each reading versus 100% proficient in only 80–90% of the readings.
One of the things I’m most grateful for in my career is my timing in history. I was lucky to pass the exams before smartphones and social media gained such a stranglehold on everyone’s attention. “In the old days” (i.e. anytime in history before about 2007!), it was actually possible to hide in a room without the entire world still having access to your attention through the computer in your pocket. When I was taking exams, I was very good at finding hiding places in my company during my study time so that I wouldn’t be interrupted.
As I say over and over, time management is probably the number one success factor in actuarial exam prep. There are many dimensions to time management, but one of the most important is the ability to focus and get the most out of each hour of your precious study time.
If you are prone to check Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, iMessage, and the billion other options for getting distracted from the present moment, it’s critical that you:
It’s remarkable how hard it is to do in this day and age, but one of the best things you can do is to just put your phone on the other side of the room when you’re studying. Just adding this little bit of friction can be an effective “circuit breaker” to stop you from mindlessly reaching for your phone.
Sometimes the Pomodoro technique works really well for people, too. That way, you’re giving your mind a reward for focusing for a specific segment of time, then you can take a break.
If you’re using your phone to study (e.g. with one of our mobile apps), I highly recommend putting your phone in “do not disturb” mode or something similar. Airplane mode is also a good choice if you’re using our app to watch videos offline. Or maybe just use a different device altogether for studying.
Key point: time management is paramount. It doesn’t matter if you put in 500 study hours if you are distracted during that time. The earlier in your prep you can actively combat distraction, the better off you’ll be.
Registration for the fall 2017 LRM exam is now open on the SOA’s site. Please don’t forget to register for the exam. The deadline is Monday, September 25, 2017.
Whether you have been studying for LRM for weeks, are just getting started, or just found out that you need to give LRM another go, we have you covered in the online seminar. Here is a roundup of key links from the blog archive that you might want to check out: