I noticed of late that I am having a problem with XATA recommended workouts in Xert.
I often take a training deficit as a challenge so when XATA recommends a workout with 80 XSS but I have a deficit of 200 XSS I go off searching for a much higher XSS ride. Likewise, if I have a surplus and XATA is recommending a 200 XSS ride but I only need 80XSS to stay good, I tend to look for less XSS rides.
I sometimes get concerned (especially when stars are showing I’m tired and I feel tired) that I am at times overdoing it. Out of curiosity then, is this just a quirk of me personality or do others struggle with this as well?
I ask mostly because I saw Paul’s video where he was coming back from time off and he had a deficit of 385 XSS or something. He said nothing to be concerned about it, but it would drive me absolutely crazy and I know I’d try to close that deficit down as quickly as a possible.
Carrying a deficit is normal in Xert. It is a function of daily XSS and current ramp rate.
XATA is based on a rolling 7-day period and TL is a weighted moving average.
You don’t have to immediately make up a deficit or worry about a surplus as the numbers even out over the rolling 7 days. Your goal is to keep the pacer needle in the 11am-1pm zone to meet your currently selected IR setting. That may include dipping towards red on occasion then bumping it back up with a long weekend ride or hard workout.
In Paul’s case his numbers will fall into place as he regains a regular weekly schedule.
Watch this portion of the Academy I3 video as it explains how deficit/surplus and form work with the Planner –
Episode I3 - Mastering Xert - Improve - The Adaptive Training Advisor - YouTube
Deficit/surplus is also discussed at several points in this podcast –
The Xert Breakthrough Lab Podcast – Xert
ridgerider2- I know, guess I have a type A personality that often views deficit as a challenge to get rid of deficit (or plain and simply I’m just too anal 
)
Like @ridgerider2 mentioned, carrying a deficit is totally fine/normal.
The goal of the training pacer isn’t to get to an exact deficit of 0 XSS at the end of each day, but rather to help keep you generally on track with your selected Improvement Rate - not getting too far ahead of yourself (risking overreaching & potential injury), and not letting you fall too far behind.
In terms of how it works, it’s fairly basic. It assumes that if you take Monday’s off (for example), that your deficit shouldn’t increase very much on Monday’s. If you do long rides on Saturday, you’ll notice your deficit will jump quite a bit from Friday to Saturday, as it’s expecting that you’ll do a longer ride.