Participate in contests

Hopefully, I have provided you with enough resources to start competing in programming competitions.

Typically, such contests last for a few hours (2-5) with about five questions in a short contest, and up to 12 or more in longer contests. The questions gradually get harder, require more data structure and algorithms knowledge, and of course practice.

Upsolve

Upsolving is a very common term among competitive programmers. Basically, the idea is this: when you participate in a contest, say you solved $3$ out of $6$ problems. You should always solve the next couple of questions after the contest; look at the tutorials, other participant’s code, whatever it takes.

See each problem as a chance to learn something new. Find out what you didn’t know in order to solve that problem. Read about it, spend hours or even days if needed, to understand the solution.

This is the best thing you can do to improve every day.

Starting out

Once you start participating in solving problems, you will immediately see that you can solve the first few easiest problems with what we have covered so far.

Sample contest

Let’s see what a two hour contest on codeforces.com looks like to give you a general idea.