Ibrahim-Elsayed's blog

Work Smarter, Not Harder.
By Ibrahim-Elsayed, history, 3 years ago, In English

Work Smarter, Not Harder, can you give me insights on how does the "Smart" part apply in training to get better at CP, and/or does it even apply ? or it just falls to years of hard work ?, (can we accelerate the process ?)

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3 years ago, # |
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Can you tell me how to get rich without doing any work?

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3 years ago, # |
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I think in CP you will need to Work smart AND hard to accelerate the process.

The people who work smart only improve slowly (except that people that are already talented)

And the people that work hard only never improve.

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    3 years ago, # ^ |
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    From what I've seen of other people around me, pure talent without much hard work might get you to blue or at most around purple.

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3 years ago, # |
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does it even apply?

I will give you a simple yet very clear example.

There was a project to build a desert themed world in Minecraft Educational Edition in my school. Everyone went to build a pyramid taking them around more than an hour to build. I simply wrote a javascript code which generated the pyramid I want in the coordinates I want and the size I want. Took me 10 minutes only.

Also in CP applies too:

Solving 5 easy problems is not as worth as solving just 1 hard problem. 1 high quality hard problem is better. You will learn a lot from it and it will also reshape your mind. What I mean by a hard problem is a problem above your current level(like X+200 where X is your rating). Not too hard and not too easy.

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    3 years ago, # ^ |
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    There was a project to build a desert themed world in Minecraft Educational Edition in my school.
    How to take admission in your school.

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    3 years ago, # ^ |
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    Thanks for the advice, definitely will start considering it while practicing.

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3 years ago, # |
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Um_nik wrote an entire blog dedicated to explaining how to practice Competitive Programming in a smart, effective way. I guess you should read it https://codeforces.net/blog/entry/98806

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