"Enjoy what you do" — this nice little seemingly key to all success in the world, to what limit does it actually resembles reality?? When you are pushing to improve, it's rather a struggle than enjoyment and after that struggle when you finally improved comes the enjoyment that you have finally improved.
My favorite video game is FIFA, and when "semi-pro" difficulty was too easy for me I moved on to "professional" and I actually started losing all my games, lost 5-0 with real madrid against real betis and so on. After losing probably 20-30 matches I got the feel and started to play better. And after playing lots of games, eventually I was so good that I would win every single match in professional. So I moved on to World Class and then I started losing again. And constantly losing is not fun, it's rather irritating. Same thing goes for CP. If I am to do some <1500 problems in CF I will actually enjoy my time and will do it for hours. But that's not gonna improve me much. So I must push to improve and solve >1500 problems and that's when the motivation slowly goes down. After doing for some time it's like "f*** this, I am outta here". Constantly losing is not enjoyable. But I must do it to actually improve there's no other way. After days of deliberate forceful attempt to improve at some point I will be better and this is how this universe works.
Why do you even want to improve in the first place? It's either to qualify for IOI or ICPC or to get a job or pursuing your dream to become a good problem solver, they are all materialistic achievements. When you are satisfied with your level and don't feel the necessity to improve, yeah maybe then you start to enjoy because you don't struggle anymore. But before that "I do CP because I love CP" — isn't it just a hoax and misleading? You actually enjoy after you accomplished your achievement and during the process it was not because of your love/enjoyment rather to achieve the goal. So shouldn't it be "I did CP because I wanted to be better at CP".
You complain way too much compared to your registration date. P.S stop creating new accounts.
I don't know about you, but I am trying to get better and I'm still enjoying the process. Is this concept really so alien?
It isn't alien when you consider it just as a hobby. But if you are pushing hard it's not always gonna be so fun whether it's cp or any other thing in the world and that does not necessarily mean cp is not for you or you don't enjoy so should quit. So I think this "love what you do" type of talks don't really apply in many cases.
76ers fan spotted :)
I think about cp, and essentially anything I try, with the same mentality as you. I enjoy cp, but I'd rather do other things than do cp in excess many times, yet I keep going because I want to be better.
However, not all people think like you. Some people genuinely enjoy the process so much it is nearly the sole motivation to keep going. I envy those people, and it doesn't make sense how some people seem to never get bored of it, but it is ignorant to say nobody can really enjoy something enough that they want to do it every day many hours a day. Plus, when you start doing it all the time, it becomes addicting and feels weird to not being practicing, and I've noticed at first it felt harder to do problems every day, but at some point it flipped and feels harder to not do them, which is probably why many high rated people say stuff like this.
But I think it's better and more realistic advice to have your mindset for most people, especially when starting off, because I think the ability to enjoy doing the same thing excessively over a large amount of time is not natural for most people in almost any subject, but you will enjoy it more when you see you are getting better.