(this is more of a vent post but if i'll read any suggestions in the comments)
For the last 6 months, I felt like I've had some horrendous luck/consistency with my contests:
EPIC Institute of Technology Round Summer 2025 (Codeforces Round 1036, Div. 1 + Div. 2): Misread 2124E - Make it Zero, lost a ton of time. (-63)
Codeforces Round 1040 (Div. 1): Decent contest, could be more optimized but overall it's not bad. (+40)
Atto Round 1 (Codeforces Round 1041, Div. 1 + Div. 2): Absolute disaster, somehow managed to save myself by still clearing 5 problems. (-71)
Codeforces Round 1046 (Div. 1): Good contest, no catastrophic errors. (+78)
Codeforces Global Round 29 (Div. 1 + Div. 2): 2147C - Rabbits costed me a lot of time and 4 penalties. (-47)
Squarepoint Challenge (Codeforces Round 1055, Div. 1 + Div. 2): Got lucky with 2152F - Triple Attack, 2152E - Monotone Subsequence was a bit slower than what I wanted. (+60)
Codeforces Round 1058 (Div. 1): Misread a condition in 2159C - Twin Polynomials ($$$a_i \le n$$$ instead of $$$a_i \le 10^{9}$$$), dropped around 110 places from that. (+4)
Pinely Round 5 (Div. 1 + Div. 2): Lost an unreasonably absurd amount of time on implementing 2161E - Left is Always Right. (+5)
Codeforces Global Round 30 (Div. 1 + Div. 2): Massively overthought 2164E - Journey, thinking took about 90 minutes. (-28)
Codeforces Round 1064 (Div. 1): Was insanely close to solving 2165D - Path Split. (+12)
Codeforces Round 1066 (Div. 1 + Div. 2): Lost a bit of time and 6 penalties to 2157C - Meximum Array 2. (-9)
Codeforces Round 1069 (Div. 1): Overthought 2174C1 - Beautiful Patterns (Easy Version). Overflow bug on 2174C1 - Beautiful Patterns (Easy Version), accidentally deleted the partially finished 2174C2 - Beautiful Patterns (Hard Version) code while fixing it. Was 5 minutes too slow to submit 2174C2 - Beautiful Patterns (Hard Version). (-17)
Codeforces Global Round 31 (Div. 1 + Div. 2): Absolute disaster again, 2180E - No Effect XOR solved around 5 minutes after contest ended. (-63)
Good Bye 2025: Good contest, though I should have went for 2178G - deCH OR Dations instead of 2178I - Numbers or Fireworks. (+94)
Hello 2026: Lost 70 minutes implementing 2183D2 - Tree Coloring (Hard Version), overthought 2183F - Jumping Man. (-36)
Codeforces Round 1073 (Div. 1): Overthought 2190D - Prufer Vertex, finished implementation 1 minute after contest ended. (+15)
Any extra advice on how to be more consistent in contests, besides from:
Doing virtual contests (last virtual contest I did was a while ago and I haven't had much time since).
Practicing problems of similar difficulty and tags to the problem that caused the bad performance (didn't make a big difference).
Being more relaxed during contests (didn't really make a difference either).
Get more sleep (I haven't noticed much of a difference).
Stop caring about rating (Would be nice but I doubt I can do that, at least not until i hit a specific rating).
