Reflecting on My Year of Consistent Leetcode Practice and Mistakes to Avoid

Introduction

This is my consistent coding for the past year 👨🏻‍💻

Additionally, I discovered that I was one among 0.4% of consistent coders on Leetcode 🧠

Mastering Consistency

How was I so consistent? Here’s how I did it,

• “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” — Confucius. I just enjoy coding and problem solving, so I thought of doing something better than my 100 Days Of Code Challenge, so I chose to do a 365 Day of Leetcode Challenge.
• “Every man is divine and strong in his real nature. What are weak and evil are his habits, his desires, and thoughts, but not himself.” — Swami Vivekananda. I love to solve problems, and my interest and passion for problem-solving made it a habit to face a new problem and solve it without any motivation.
• “First we make our habits, and then our habits make us.” — John Dryden. Similar to how we do our daily tasks, problem-solving has become a habit for me without much pressure or inspiration.
• “Programming is a journey, not a destination. The code you write today is not the code you will write tomorrow.” — Unknown. Similar to how you go to the gym and exercise and maintain your health, it is necessary to train your brain as well as the ability to code.
• It’s not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives. It’s what we do consistently.” — Tony Robbins. Consistency is an art. It was hard for me to be consistent a few years back, so in order to master consistency as a goal, I did this challenge.

Mistakes to Avoid

Here are a few mistakes that you can avoid while doing leetcode,

Build your foundation first: We generally force ourselves to get the solution anyway, and once we see the solution, we feel bad about ourselves, and all the negative self-talk comes into play. But, most people do not understand that you must know the basics first before solving that particular problem. How can you expect yourself to play chess well if you don’t know how the coins move? Clear your fundamentals/syntax of whatever programming language, then push yourself to solve the problem.

Getting to the solution is not everything: You should start valuing your efforts rather than getting the solution. Problem-solving skills are developed in those 30 minutes of fighting with the problem to get the solution. Sometimes, when you are not able to get the solution on the initial days, it is okay to look into the solutions by others, but it should not be a regular practice.

Don’t code in your head: Pick up a pen and paper, try to think of all the possible solutions, and focus on building up the solution. Start with the smallest example, try to come up with a solution, and then optimize it with edge case scenarios, etc.

Concepts are limited. Problems are infinite: There are more than 2000+ problems on Leetcode, and you don’t need to solve all of them. I just coded it as a matter of consistency. However, you need not solve every single problem every day if you want to improve your problem-solving.

Read other’s code: Even if I could solve the problem on my own, I always go to the comment section and quickly scan over superior solutions. You may not be aware of how many more effective approaches and viewpoints there are to solving the same issue. Also, I have done many open sources, so it has helped me to view others co’ code in a better way.

Always time yourself: Establish a timer for each task; the breakdown is as follows: easy tasks take around 15 minutes, medium tasks take about 30 minutes, and hard tasks take about 45 minutes. Try not to enjoy the moment of finding the answer right away.

Don’t care about ratings: No matter how many questions you solve in the contest, show up every time. Once you show up, you have completed the hardest part.

Up-solve the contest questions again: After the contest try to solve the questions without any time limit, if you don’t get it then check other’s solutions understand what they have done, read about that particular topic, and solve it back again using the specific knowledge.

I have answered many more questions about my journey in the video below. Do watch, like, subscribe to my channel to show your support 🙏🏻

“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.” — Albert Einstein.

In the end, it doesn’t matter how smart or dumb or lucky you are, if you are consistent enough you can outwork all the people you think are talented or smarter than you. Also, life is not something that happens on weekends. It is something that happens every single day.

A Big Thank You 🙏🏻

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