LeetCode tips from the author of Blind 75

 Can somebody advice, is there any way to learn a more productive way of thinking when approaching a problem? If one is thinking on a problem for an hour and have no clue or slight clue that just means one is just walking in circles. If one starts developing an idea but then drops it because cannot fit all variations to check in mind and the notes on paper are poorly structured, one is just loosing the problem one has almost won. Both happens to me all the time. Most of the time i am just looking at the problem from different angles waiting until an intuition (which of course is improving with a number of previous tasks you have solved) hopefully clicks and some insight magically appears in mind. I started feeling that is counterproductive and that there is some better organized way to approach tasks. That might include more detailed step by step notes on paper (even that may help a lot). May include a kind of brainstorm what data structures and algorithms seem applicable. May also include bringing to a logical completion any idea which seems promising. Is it possible to learn or at least somehow improve that mind process?

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jianminchen686

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Question: Can somebody advice, is there any way to learn a more productive way of thinking when approaching a problem? If one is thinking on a problem for an hour and have no clue or slight clue that just means one is just walking in circles.
Answer: I just finished 5 months Leetcode algorithm practice, solved another 80 algorithms. So I solved 691 algorithms. I chose to study votrubac and his top-voted discuss posts, 100 top voted discuss posts. Sometimes I could not understand his idea, and then I copied one of C# discuss posts, and then debug the code, find a working solution first. Nothing can beat your own practice, learn from your own mistakes. Keep going.
A drill includes

1. Find 100 algorithms to review - choose top voted discuss posts from votrubac
2. Find a player with most hard working experience and learn from his analysis - votrubac
3. Be a quick learner - put together a discuss post, and demonstrate how good you are learning one algorithm; what impresses you most after you spend one hour to do the research.
4. I learn better to work on a hard level algorithm, so I skip a lot of easy and medium level algorithms sometimes. I am hunting my biggest weakness through those algorithms.