Abstract

Suspend participating in Codeforces Rounds for a long time (at least a few months). During this time, try to participate in contests on other websites (AtCoder/Luogu/CodeChef or other). After that, when you participate in Codeforces Rounds again, your rating will surprisingly increase (at least for me). Here's why. Something interesting is that I got this truth from rhythm games.

Detail

Take a look at my rating graph.

I was nearly always in green/grey in 2023 before September (accidentally became specialist after an educational round but returned pupil after the next round). I thought the problems in division 2 are too hard for me and I will permanently remain in green/grey. Then I suddenly remember an experience in rhythm game.

In February 2023, I was playing a song named Concvssion with the difficulty IN15 in Phigros. I kept getting 1 good, and I tried for many days, but the results were always 1 good. Then I gave up playing it and played other charts.

And in July, I recollected Concvssion IN15 and tried it again. This time, I got All Perfect. It told me that if you are struggling with something, try to suspend it for a while then do it again.

So, I decided to suspend participating in Codeforces Rounds until 2024.

On December 30th 2023, I restart participating in Codeforces Rounds. I participated in Good Bye 2023, Hello 2024 and Round 921 (Div. 2), after the Round 922 (Div. 2) I returned to Specialist, and had a big jump at the Round 923 (Div. 3) which is also my first rank 500-, a small jump at the Round 924 (Div. 2) which is also my fourth rank 2000- in Div. 2.

Finally, after the Codeforces Round 925 (Div. 3), I got my second rank 500- and successfully became an expert.

I believe it's yet another road for a lot of struggling greens and greys.