BigBadBully's blog

Contest Anxiety
By BigBadBully, history, 7 months ago, In English

Whenever I give contests I feel extremely anxious. The last contest I gave I was only able to do A and after an hour I felt so much stress that I left the contest. 1 month later I upsolved the same contest up until E (inclusive). This happened to me many times before. While practicing I can often do <2000 problems without editorial but in contest I struggle with >1400 problems. Why is this so? How can I prevent this from happening? I don't want to be stuck in newbie

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7 months ago, # |
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try giving virtual contest daily i guess

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7 months ago, # |
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this is normal , just give more and more contests and also try to ask yourself the reason honestly and you will figure out yourself rather than posting blogs , you already know the answer , just focus and ask yourself

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7 months ago, # |
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I think this doesn't have to do much with your practice. If u can solve ~2000 problems later on, you need to gradually raise your expectation with yourself, like maybe consider solving A and B initially satisfactory, until you reach pupil...

I see you have given very less contests, so try giving virtual contests to be more familiar with the environment (remember the if u fuck up the virtual contest, it doesn't matter, so u can solve in a competitive environment without the extra worry of loss :D )

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7 months ago, # |
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Are you really interested in competitive programming? or are you just doing it for ratings?

Maybe you care a lot about rating rather than enjoying CP.

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7 months ago, # |
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you have no reason to be anxious since the result of you only solving A is pretty obvious

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7 months ago, # |
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try to solve a lot of problems

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7 months ago, # |
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It used to happen to me also... but rather thinking about a lot of other things like will I able to solve this question or not... will my rating decrease if I do not solve it... others have already solved it, I am not even getting an idea...

Just focus on the question.. I maintain timestamps like 05:00 read and understood the question 10:00 figured out that brute force won't work 14:00 made an interesting observation..

and so on..

So just focus on question.. and forget about everything else.. Your aim should be to just solve the question and take anything new you learn from this question.

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7 months ago, # |
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Stop thinking about the contest and focus on the problems. The only solution.

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    7 months ago, # ^ |
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    I would like to do that but I simply can't forget that I'm in a contest

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      7 months ago, # ^ |
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      try again and again until you succeed

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        7 months ago, # ^ |
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        Can you please look at my profile, and point out what things I am doing wrong?

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          7 months ago, # ^ |
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          You've solved a lot of easy problems, you should move on to the harder ones.

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7 months ago, # |
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Don't take contest/ratings seriously and enjoy the process of solving problems.

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7 months ago, # |
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Avoid submitting hacks, and focus on solving more problems. Submitting many unsuccessful hacks costs much score.

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    7 months ago, # ^ |
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    I did that because I got really angry because of my bad performance...

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7 months ago, # |
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I analyzed your practice strategy. You have done a lot of hard problems which is great!!! but in order to get a good ranking, you need to solve div2A and div2B very fast in contests. So, I recommend doing speed runs where you take 10 div2A or 5 div2B and set a timer for one hour. I'm sure you will easily get to the expert level within a span of 4 months as your ability to do hard problems.

In my case, I'm practicing div2C now and I can rarely solve div2C in contests. That's why virtual contests won't benefit me a lot. I would rather practice div2C separately for better results.

If I could solve until E like you, I'd definitely do one thing. That is Virtual contests. Try to do this for a month and you will see a big difference.

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7 months ago, # |
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Just relax

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7 months ago, # |
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I can't believe that people are giving advice to this troll lol

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7 months ago, # |
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Don't care about ratings, just follow your progression. Best of luck! :)

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7 months ago, # |
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Maybe using some relaxation techniques(Meditations, Progressive Muscle Relaxation, Mindfulness tricks) before contests might help you focus!

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4 months ago, # |
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you should start taking xanax it will help i promise

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4 months ago, # |
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bully the anxiety ez

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