I am progressing a little day by day but I don't know if I am going in the right direction or if the direction is right but the method I chose is slow. I do want to ask your opinion about what will improve skills more?

1. Practice algorithms on basis of whatever I find and solve multiple problems for the topic starting from easy to hard.

2. Open up a previous contest and try to code all those problems, reading the editorial and then learning related algorithms and Data Structure.

I am focusing on option 2 nowadays but would appreciate your opinion on approach of improving skills.