Hello, and welcome to another insecure blog entry of mine.
Lately I've increased my study by being motivated by interesting problems, nice blogs and community here, and also by a endless urge to excel my knowledge. All of this helps me get through some though times when I'm stuck in a particular problem or technique. But this isn't the same on my teammates.
I've already instigated them to participate more here, or to look for interesting problems as well as teaching each other, but it seems not quite effective. Maybe the problem is with me, maybe I'm too focused and they are not. Maybe they want different things right now in their life and their focus are on other things, like earning some money developing stuff to someone, or even they are too comfortable thinking they are the best in our sub-regional (which I think is a huge trap).
Don't get me wrong, they have a huge potential of being one of the best and together achieve a lot and I have absolute faith on them, but recently this faith and this potential are being put to test by lack of study.
Sometimes I can be very harsh in my critiques just to maybe put them to work so we can grow together, but more than one time this was treated as some kind of bossy action, and I don't blame them.
Have you ever being in this situation before? What should I do to get them on tracks again? Give me tips to get them working again and also not be a total jerk while doing it.
Thank you for your time! Be gently in the comments.
Thanks. Now I think that I can motivate my teammate before VK Cup.
ggggggggggggggooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Now we can just show this post. Thanks mate! :P
I am in this situation right now. I won't say "teammates" because I am practicing for IOI and not ICPC, but "study group". I don't find my groupmates very interested in taking part in contests and practicing everyday. Yeah, my friends don't even practice everyday, where I practice 5-6 hours per day. I don't know why I am so focused and they not. All of them are grey here on Codeforces.
My answer to how to make them work again without being a jerk would be...I talked to them. I told them stories of other programmers(in top countries like Russia or China) that even though they practice about 10 hours a day, they only come up to a rank of about 20 in their country level olympiad. If someone practices only an hour every week and goes up competing against them, its an insult to them. So, I talked to them and clarified that I will be hard on them but they should not mind because its for their own good.
I am glad that they understood and are practicing a bit more now(about 2 hours a day). I hope they make up to one of the bests in some years :)
Thanks for your reply, I'll try to be open and talkative with them in the future. I hope they won't give up on this.
Cheers!
I've a very similar story to yours. In short, I think that if you still have a chance, you should get other teammates. Ones that are as focused as you're. Ones that don't want other things currently other than training, as much as you do.
Simply put in mind that they just may be not the suitable ones for you, and there's nothing bad in that. The real bad thing is when you regret forming that team.
If you don't have a chance to change your team, you must think seriously about skipping the sub-regional contest, instead of wasting one of the 2 chances to go to ICPC WF with a team you don't like and have serious problems with, and cannot build hopes on them. And no, that's not betrayal. They betray you when they aren't as serious as you.
That's my own advice, I'm deeply regretting not following it myself, when I had the chance to, and instead just followed my dumb emotions.
In my university they are the top coders there, also I find myself a bit newbie compared to them. Maybe, as I said, this is the real problem. Since nobody else at my college group is as skilled as they are, they maybe are too comfortable and then study less.
I think if there was a constant "threat" of not being the best around here they would sit their asses and study more. Idk..
In my case, I never underestimate other contestants, they are really good and we may need to study really hard to surpass them. I think my low self confidence makes me study more.
Thanks for your input. Cheers!
Why don't you become their motive ?
"In my university they are the top coders there, also I find myself a bit newbie compared to them. Maybe, as I said, this is the real problem. Since nobody else at my college group is as skilled as they are, they maybe are too comfortable and then study less.
I think if there was a constant "threat" of not being the best around here they would sit their asses and study more. Idk..."
I think the solution is already there ! you work HARD and become better than them , then I believe they ARE going to do something more .
I want an answer for this question..how to motivate your self?
:'(
Motivation is bullshit — it is not sustainable and very fragile.
Work on the habits instead.
I think motivation serve as a bootstrap. Habit comes with time, but without this initial kick, there maybe never a chance of creating this habit.
Cheers!
I had this issue too when forming team for ACM ICPC. I think it is very important to talk to your teammates and be very clear about your goals as well as their goals, and find a common ground from there.
You mentioned you are newbie compare to your teammates. Maybe instead of asking them to train, you can ask them to help you train, by doing contests with you and discuss problems. The result would be the same, but maybe it's a better approach.
From my start in competitive programming to my retirement of ICPC my university traditionally made an individual contest for selecting teams to participate in ICPC (the coach select the teams). In 2014 (for the 2014-2015 season) one guy (let's call him Guy X) who had participated talked to me about the scoreboard, asked if some people made some kind of protest (as a lot of people performed way worse than expected and I got first place) and said he wasn't really in the mood to participate in ICPC. Guess what? I was teamed up with him.
Guy X had participated casually as a freshmen in competitive programming (2011) and hasn't trained since then. One other university team had a previous world finalist which was regarded as the best non-retired competitor here and his teammates were better than mine so I knew we had to train a lot to have at least a chance to be better than them.
Guy X from my team didn't want to train at all. He didn't show up at some university training (which is not nearly enough to perform well in regional), he allegedly had no free time during week days to train or during weekends to do extra-training. When we managed to schedule a 5-hour long contest he stayed for the first or second hour and then left. I talked to the coach about this and he said there should be a manager (being bossy in some way) in the group to force days of train but this didn't work either.
We managed to get to the regional (after the sub-regional). There, Guy X who didn't trained with us and didn't practice our strategy goes against it by asking to discuss problems at 5 min of contest and after that takes a compilation error (which gives penalty). After that our team crumbled and no hope was left (though we probably got the fastest CE of the regional of all time = ))
In the 2015-2016 season, I was teamed up with a guy (let's call Guy Y) who had almost the same background as Guy X. He only trained casually in his first year (also 2011) of university and decided in 2015 to take classes about competitive programming and participate in ICPC because of how I talked about competitive programming with joy during these years he stopped training. One of the reasons he said he stopped was because he felt the top competitors in university used to form a cluster and forget about beginners, so he felt he could give it another shot after my advertisement.
Guy Y was pursuing a master degree and in every training he said how much time competitive programming was taking from his studies and his research. However, Guy Y never skipped a training and also participated in discussions and upsolving. He didn't know how to code several things (like max flow or segtrees) but he was willing to be helpful and to at least try to understand how these "advanced" things (by that I mean which is not usually taught in an undergraduate course in my university, though flow is taught as linear programming here) work as black boxes (and possibly ask for me or the other teammate to code it after he solves the problem). With our code reference notebook he also coded several problems during our trainings and contests.
Guy Y played an essential role in the regional allowing us to go to World Finals and also for our placement there (probably not even reasonable for red coders, but it was great for us = )).
Though Guy X and Guy Y had almost the same abilities and lack of free time when they joined the team Guy X turned out to be a burden whereas Guy Y was a fundamental piece in our team. I think Guy Y knew how much I liked the competition (as I talked a lot about competitive programming) and that gave him enough reasons to train, together, maybe, with a desire to prove he could be good enough to represent our university.
Thanks for your reply.
I got in touch with my teammates. I'll try to work together with them as well as with other contestants from my university. The plan is to help everybody get better and also learn a lot and decide which team should I get in when we are closer to the first phase.
Cheers!