bassdummy's blog

By bassdummy, 3 years ago, In English

Hello, friendly folk from Codeforces! Hope all of you have been safe and sound during this pandemic, enjoying problem solving as you always do.

Since the beginning of my university life, I devoted my time solely to competitive programming. During the initial days of lockdown, I invested so much time in it that I started associating problem solving with productivity and productivity with happiness. In July of last year, I became expert for the first time from my main handle. I naturally had to work hard for it, but I truly enjoyed the journey. Every problem I solved, no matter how simple or difficult it was, gave me sheer delight when I got accepted. As I felt I had achieved a personal milestone, I decided to take a break for a few weeks.

It was December when I decided to get back to solving problems. But this time, to my utter dismay, I discovered that I was not enjoying solve problems as much as I used to earlier. Lengthy problem statements became a major hurdle, as I started getting distracted halfway through reading them. This was an issue I never encountered before, given I had solved over 500 problems in UVa online judge, which is notorious for its verbose problem statements. I tried in other judges that I used before, like AtCoder, SPOJ or CodeChef, but all efforts were in vain.

I'm not sure how many of you have ever faced this, but if you have, could you please shed some light on how I could get back the joy that I used to get from problem solving in my earlier days? If that is not possible, how can I possibly get motivated to put efforts in solving more advanced problems? I've never been afraid of hard work, but I just need some feasible objective that I can work towards.

I am really not considering quitting problem solving, since it is the only thing I ever truly enjoyed from an educational perspective. Academic projects that are development-oriented never attracted me to a great extent. I feel I have so much to learn from programming contests, and quitting it would make me miss out on that.

I could really use some constructive suggestions regarding this. Thank you for your time, and stay safe!

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