I’m not a candidate master, nor am I solving Div 2 D problems in 10 minutes. I’m still a beginner, still getting TLEs, and still struggling with basic logic.

But instead of giving up, I tweaked my mindset recently, and it changed how I practice:

1. The 15-Minute Paper Rule Earlier, I used to stare at an empty IDE for an hour feeling dumb. Now, if I can't figure out the logic on paper in 15 minutes for Problem A or B, I don't ego-grind. I look at a small hint or dry-run test cases manually.

2. Learning from Clean Code After a contest, I open the shortest accepted submissions for Problem A/B. Seeing someone solve in 10 clean lines what took me 40 lines of messy nested loops is a huge eye-opener.

3. Rating Doesn't Matter (Yet) Focusing on + delta or — delta was ruining my focus. Now I only track my up-solved problems.

If you're also struggling at the bottom of Div 3/4, you're not alone. We're all learning.

What’s one thing that helped you most when you were just starting out?