I've always wondered about the optimal way to practice (I even did spam some reds back in the days), and while there definitely isn't any "magic" that's going to accelerate your growth, a mere psychological factor did result in immense growth for me after being stuck for so long (my rating increased from 1523 to 1853 in three months and my level was consistent, in other words it wasn't just some lucky contests). Yet, I still have many questions unanswered. For instance, can sometimes too much practicing lead to detrimental results?
Because of this, I, alongside Lime. designed a brief survey (it takes less than two minutes to fill) to gather insights from programmers across different levels. Currently, we have 94 responses. Hopefully, after having big enough sample, I'll be sharing the results on what factors really affect one's growth and what don't.
Please take two minutes to fill the survey here: survey
If you believe there are additional factors that I should include in the survey—perhaps something unique from your personal experience—please don’t hesitate to DM me or comment down below.
Sounds fun! Goodluck (:
done.
Done
hope afew red coders would take the time to fill it
there are some currently!
I like the initiative and look forward to the results, I have some questions though :
In what time unit is the answer to average daily practice supposed to be ?
I think there is some ambiguity around "rate after the first contest" too. Do you mean rating ? If so, CF rating used to start from 1400 but it starts from 0 now so how to handle that ?
Hi,
Sorry for the inconvenience, you're right, it should be rating rather than rate. Unfortunately, when I noticed it many people had already filled it, and changing it might mess up the Excel sheet.
For the latter part of your question, I believe the chance of having a user that had started and had their most active year that early is very insignificant, so I didn't give it much thought.
done
What psychological factor did affect to your performance? Can you tell more concrete? I don't think psychology change something
When I participated in contests before that sharp increase in rating, I took my rating too seriously. Then as our TST was just a few months away, I stopped even checking the standings during the contest and solely focused on doing my best regardless of what might happen to my rating. This mindset also helped me in the TST itself. When I qualified for the IOI for the first time I was still an expert, and I think did great because I had no expectations of actually making it. On the other hand, during our last TST, I was too focused on earning 1st place. However, I ended up performing terribly and ranked 3rd instead.
In addition, there are plenty of research papers that discuss the effects of external motivation and the benefits of focusing on your effort instead. I recommend you check Dr. Carol Dweck's research on.Growth Mindset if you're interested.
Is the answer for how much time on average did you practice in a day supposed to be in hours? That's what I assumed, but I think you should specify the unit there.