You could study some success story and try to do the same.

On the other hand, I believe that there exist colors I will never reach. It is actually a matter of fact the most people doing CP never reach purple. And this fact becomes even more true is you substitute "purple" by arbitrary more nice color.

I think it has something to do with whether you really want to do CP or you are doing it for the sake of it! for example, I don't think there can be a better use of my time than doing CP given the people around me and my surroundings that doesn't mean that I always dreamt of being a good CPer . And reaching 1800 or expert is more dependent on have you practiced enough?. This is solely based on my limited experience with CP

I think that, to a certain extent, one's progress depends on talent, but hard work is ultimately what gets you to progress. From my own experience, you need to be patient when it comes to rating (or growth metrics, in general) and the key to reaching (and staying on) a new rank is consistency: if you look at my graph, I reached 1800 rating in May 2020 and almost one year later I was still in the 1800s. However, I became much better at solving div2D problems consistently and it was only a matter of time until I'd reach CM, which finally happened in September 2021.

So what you can do is just enjoy CP because of CP's beauty and wait patiently for your rating to grow :)

Most people for some unknown reason believe that just solving a lot of contests should make the difference and that competetive programming is isolated from the other education. I don't think that's the case

When we just start doing cp, the rating grows just because we're getting used to the rules of cp (and because of stupid fake rating feature), not because we somehow actually improve. And then it stagnates, again not because there is an enormous difference between blue and violet, but just because your rating on codeforces actually reaches your overall skill you acquired before starting doing cp

We hit the glass ceiling defined by our background and genetics. I believe it is possible to improve further but it requires tremendous amount of efforts and frankly I'm not sure that I want it that much.

This shows that your ability is probably between expert and candidate master, so think about how to improve your ability. And also, maybe you need to play more stably?

"hard work makes you expert, but if you want master, you need talent."

--- to me it should be "hard work makes you master, but if you want GM, you need talent."

So we are just not hard working enough.

Personally, I believe that the rating which you'll need talent to reach is much higher than CM, M, GM, and even IGM.

What you may actually need is so-called "systematic training", or a systematic knowledge of the whole Competitive Programming system. You need to build up your "talent tree", or "knowledge map".

To be more specific, don't aim yourself to some particular rating, like 1900 or 2100. That's limiting your potential on purpose. Learn new stuff. Learn DP, learn skills to optimize DP, learn common models of DP, such as common models of backpack DP, range DP, counting DP, and monotone queue, and the slope trick. Learn state compression. Learn the Quadrilateral inequality. Do some exercises on them, make sure you get very familiar with their concept and ideas. Just don't get driven too far and learn things that you can't understand at all.

Learn maths, learn combinatorics. Learn basics data structures as well. Segment trees are the most basic thing, and I believe that they have a variety of applications that's not at all obvious. Learn Sparse Table, BIT, HLD, balanced trees, disjoint sets and their revoke operation.

It's enough of a list when you get what I'm saying. What you really need is not stability at solving Div.1 ABs at the moment. It is, however, a general knowledge of algorithms and more importantly, their common applications and the ideas behind it. Try to understand every technique that you learn. Sync with them.

Most CodeForces problems below 2400 I guess do not involve complicated algorithms. Some of them hardly involve any algorithm at all. But this doesn't mean that you shouldn't learn them, for two reasons:

• The ideas behind the algorithm is really helpful for improving your problem-solving skills.
• Simple problems can't stimulate your skills, and therefore has little help on your ability.

With a little practice, you can totally reach CM and even much higher. But advancing does require a firm understanding of the fundamental algorithms. Only practising 1900~2100 problems simply aren't enough.

As we all know expert is $$$[1600, 1899]$$$ and candidate master is $$$[1900, 2099]$$$ so the gap is only $$$1$$$

I feel hardwork takes you to expert and also only hardwork will take you to master or grandmaster or legendary grandmaster.

Class beats talent, order beats class.

Yes

The key is the word stable, and the answer is yes. Almost everyone's ratings fluctuate about 100 either side of their mean, so any CM is automatically either pushing Master or at risk of demotion back to Expert. If we define a stable CM as someone very unlikely to drop back down to Expert, then they are likely pushing Master at their limit. A stable expert is significantly weaker. At best they might hope to make low CM in a great contest and then fall back down.

Having been through this transition (I am now, I hope, 'stable' CM venturing into Master sometimes), the steps were:

1. stable Expert: I usually could solve 3 problems in a contest; sometimes 4, sometimes only 2. I might make a number of mistakes along the way and I often took a significant amount of time to work out C / D. I almost never got beyond that, my code was ugly, and my approach was often based on hunches rather than proofs, and rarely on experience of similar questions. My first instincts were almost always greedy.

2. Expert-CM fluctuations: my speed improved significantly to allow me to push towards CM. I was not consistent enough to maintain CM status in every contest, and on a bad day might still find myself in big trouble on an ad hoc problem. I would often get stressed out by a couple of WAs, knowing that my rating would suffer. In general, though, I was becoming competent at doing the basics right. I started questioning my solutions before rushing into the wrong approach.

3. stable CM / occasional Master: this is where I am now. I usually can do A to D reasonably quickly on any Div 2 contest. I make far fewer mistakes. When I cross the Master boundary, it's usually because I've done A to D very quickly and sometimes with an additional E solve. I am more confident now in my ability to prove my approach rather than assume it. My DP in particular is getting better, and I have well-versed methods for anything standard to do with segment trees, graphs, DSU, etc. Problems below rating 2000 I expect to be able to do most of the time. Above 2400 I can almost never solve. 2100-2300 is the range where sometimes I get them, sometimes I don't.

If there's one takeaway from this, I think it is that I have progressed through these stages as I have become more confident in recognising problems and in coding them quickly when I do. When I have to think and do unfamiliar things, that's when I continue to struggle — I might solve the problem, but much more slowly and sometimes after a variety of approaches and errors. The difference is that the level at which you struggle hopefully gets higher.

Thanks to all of you. After 2 months of practicing, I am currently master now, with 2200+ rating, highest of all time.

I feel like it needs good sense of the problems, and accurate implementation. If you have that sense, you can find out the hints easily and write the solution in a short time.

Nobody's stable. I dropped from 1930 to 1696 within 2 contests :)

Master is easy, from master to GM depends on your harding work, and to IGM needs some speed or talent

I would like to know if any people have the same feeling as me, like very hard to reach purple