The Journey Continues
Intro
Now that I’m 5 months into this challenge and I’ve hit my first milestone of Expert, I thought it’d be nice to take a look back on my journey here and some tips to getting to Expert (and beyond) outside of solving more problems. I’ve also revamped the blog over the past week with a sparkling new comment system you can now find at the bottom of all the posts. But without further ado, let’s get into it!
Stats
I always see questions like “How many problems do you need to get to x rating?” or “How much do you need to practice everyday?”, so I’ve decided to link some of my stats here for those interested in what I did to reach Expert.
Slow Cooker
It does not matter how slow you go as long as you don’t stop. -Confucius
The biggest lesson I’ve learned in these last 5 months is that nothing worth having is ever fast or easy to attain. As a society, we’ve fallen in love with this idea of reaching the top at breakneck speeds and seeing success as something reserved for those who are willing to sacrifice everything and grind their days away. We point to examples like Tesla and their famous CEO Elon Musk
- who’s acclaimed for his inhuman work ethic - while turning a blind eye to startups like Theranos whose downfall was because they scammed their investors to try and live up to that idealized fast success. Just like everyone else around me, I bought into this idea and had a subsequent crash and burn when I failed to attain the quick rating goals I had set out for myself. While it’s important to maintain long term goals and make progress towards them, it’s equally important to enjoy the present. I’d also like to give a thanks to everyone who reads this blog because towards the end of January during my burnout, the thought of failing this challenge, and ultimately all my readers, gave me the motivation to get off my butt and start practicing again.
Mirror, Mirror On The Wall
I am not in competition with anyone but myself. My goal is to improve myself continuously. -Bill Gates
It’s a common adage that you should only try to beat you from yesterday, but it’s a lot easier said than done. All the friends I’ve made had been doing CP for far longer, so of course I couldn’t match their performance instantly. My mentor made USACO Plat in one season; I didn’t. When you’re surrounded by people better than you, it’s tough not to use them as a point of reference for your own progress. I’m not arguing against being around strong competitors as it’s always a sure-fire way to improve and learn at a faster pace, but comparing yourself to them can manifest into a very unhealthy mindset. For everyone out there also struggling with this and feeling like this is one of their biggest roadblocks, like it was for me, my advice is just to focus on the problems. Don’t look at standings. Don’t worry at speed. Devote all of your attention to whatever problem you’re on and don’t let that waver. I’d say that fixing my mentality during contests has been the sole reason for my +250 rating over the past 4 contests. If you have problems with focus and stress, your practice won’t matter much, as you’ll be completely out of form. Although you can try using a placebo effect through doing virtual contests and 2 hour practice sessions, the best fix to this is doing every real contest you can fit into your schedule.
Outro
I was pretty much plateaued at ~1450 for 3 months, but hopefully I’m an inspiration that you can break whatever rating ceiling you’re struggling with now. I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comment section below about whether or not you agree that mentality plays a huge role in your rating. I’m off to celebrate my birthday tomorrow with my first official unrated contest, so here’s to another 5 months of CP and weirdly scheduled posts! Thanks for reading.
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