Auto comment: topic has been updated by sc3developer (previous revision, new revision, compare).

Bro I'm in the same exact same situation as you lmao. Thanks for making this blog

I'll offer my 2c for the following:

2 I just drilled 100x 1600 and 100x 1700 (I was about 1900 at the time). Keep in mind though this is what took my impl from "diabolically bad" to "okay", so going from "okay" to "good at it" might take more effort. (Also I was also trying to get more consistent at easy problems for CF which I am not sure if that is something that you want to do for USACO (refer to the theory of getting good at codeforces blog (yeah, the one you thought I was cheating in (also quad nested parens just for fun))))

3 Idk. I honestly just practice whenever I can and don't really care if I'm busy with coursework or going out with friends or whatever. I think you should try to make an effort to be more disciplined but if you end up hating on yourself too much it can flip the opposite way where now you have a negative mental association with practice.

4 Powerlifting

5 Maybe. I haven't noticed a huge difference personally yet though. Maybe also you can worry less about speed ("slow is mistake-free and mistake-free is fast")

6 Good macros

As a camper (guernsey group) I hope my advice will help. A lot of this is yap and talking about my personal experience so you can skip to the end if you want to most important points.

1. I cannot speak for anyone else, but I hope my personal experience can help you and others who read this comment understand a bit of what it took to go from a measly gold to a camper in a year (even if most of it was luck). To go from gold to plat, I grinded usaco guide gold and finished most of the easy/normal problems in the sections in the few weeks before the first contest. Luckily I got 800/1000 on the first contest, securing the exact cutoff and making my way to plat division. In fact, there were others who also got this exact cutoff and made camp, so don't beat yourself up if you don't make it the first time. To go from plat to camp, I "practiced" a lot by solving a total of 0 problems in the span of January 15 to April 17 (do not replicate this if you want to succeed — i only did this because I was too busy focused on AIME and then USAJMO) and then hopped back on the usaco guide grind, but this time on the plat section and did a very small portion (again, I had only 1 week between USAJMO and Open and all of my time before that was spent on USAJMO prep). Then open came and I got a 267/1000, which was surprising enough for guernsey camp.

2. "Solve more problems and listen to twice." In all seriousness, solving more problems is the only way to get better at implementation, as every time consuming problem is a learning experience. Maybe listening to twice isn't your thing, me personally I listen to a lot of Ye, but I think listening to music can help depending on who you are.

3. Discipline? What's that?
4. Past time in math competitions definitely helps, not just the knowledge of NT and Combo but also being able to use the same problem solving methods in math and transferring them to cs is definitely useful, especially with mathforces contests.
5. Feels pretty distinct to me. The format of the contests is quite different, so you will be finding yourself taking a lot more time on USACO problems vs Codeforces. Don't have specific advice, just make sure to keep an open mind and not tunnel vision. Tunnel visioning caused me to get a 0 on a plat contest once (don't forget to farm partials.)
6. Me personally, I haven't seen roaches in the dorms but I do know some people who had them in their rooms.
7. No, but I think there is more to be said. Firstly, the number 1 mistake that can easily be fixed is not farming partials. In silver and gold divisions, this isn't such a big thing as you anyways need 2 problems + partial on the other to promote, but in platinum, every point matters. The cutoff for guernsey group was a measly 183/1000, which could be done by doing a few trivial partials and a bit of thinking, just goes to show how hard plat is. Another big thing to learn is to move on. Once a contest is done, there is nothing you can go back and change. Do I think I could've done better, given others in my grade were scoring even higher than me? Yeah of course, but we learn to move on. In fact, I cleared the guernsey cutoff by more than the promotion cutoff in contest 1. I know you are aiming for ICP on the next silver contest, but don't get hung up on it if you don't. Some people I know who ICPed to plat on contest 1 did terribly on open, getting two digit or low 3 digit scores.

If I had to summarize this very long rambling/comment into the advice I find the most useful, I would suggest to do USACO Guide and other adjacent OI problems (this is only a suggestion as you should prepare how you feel is best for you), and stay persistent with your goals, not to the point of burn out but enough to where you can look back and realize that you've improved. Treat USACO like any other goal you are trying to achieve and don't get stuck up on results, I guarantee you that when doing the contest with nothing to lose, you end up with a much better result than if you do it with your life on the line (metaphorically).