 What's up guys Mike the coder here today? We're gonna talk about should you focus on speed in competitive programming or should you focus on solving the next harder problem Right so in competitive programming when we solve problems, right? We submit a solution To a problem and then it basically we have a countdown timer when it goes down right and then when we submit a solution we get more points based on that so The idea is that should we focus on speed or should we focus on the next problem? Because if you focus on the next problem you get more points But you may not be able to solve it if you don't pass all the cases or if you solve Those easy ones that you know how to solve solve them faster so you get more points now in my opinion I've been doing this for like a year or two like actually seriously and I've focused way too much on speed like I got to this point where the first problem I could actually solve on adcoder like less than a minute or two actually both of these problems I got a minute and a two minutes and I in my rating not increase that much because at the third problem or fourth problem Which I couldn't solve the fourth problem third problem. It took me at at least 20 minutes to solve and that Actually does affect a rating Right, so it's actually better if in my opinion that you focus on the next problem the harder problem instead of focusing on speed Like if you just focus on trying to solve one problem The first problem faster and faster. Essentially is that your your range is gonna like Oscillate over and over again. I was able to like the the times when I only solve one problem This is the time where I had barely little rating increase And I was just focusing on seeing if I could solve the first problem less than a minute Over and over again, and that didn't really increase my rating at all It just kept oscillating on adcoder It's only the time when like here at this point where I was actually started Starting to solve a little harder problems where am I writing actually increased? So it's actually not a good idea if you just focus on speed because speed doesn't really help you that much Like I did I solved way too many easy problems just focusing on speed In fact, that's actually one of my worst things that I did for the past two years when I was on code forces because look at this I My rating literally kept oscillating up and down because I was just that kept focusing on speed like in this part If you look at this part when I got like was a division 2 Look, okay, so division 2 This part the problem a I Solved it in seven minutes. Okay in seven minutes And I just kept trying to see if I could solve it like less than seven minutes Maybe six minutes five minutes and in my opinion that does not help you at all Because if you keep keep trying to solve this like I like if you keep trying to solve Decreasing the time there's no you're not going to increase your rating that much like being able to solve an 800 problem Underneath five minutes is not going to help you that much. You're gonna end up oscillating between 800 and 9 in a thousand so Speed does don't don't focus on speed and competitive programming. You're gonna not your speed is it's just gonna like your ratings Just gonna like converge to one point and it's not gonna improve. So yeah, and also some put times in my Sometimes when I kept doing a contest like I was I would just like give up on a problem And I just submit it to see Submit a random problem and I just don't look at the problem because it was way too early And then don't do that all either because your rating is gonna drop if you actually don't solve the problem because you're not really trying So yeah, these four times I didn't really care at all in the contest and in my rating just dropped So I'm like went back up and then we're gonna dropped again and it kept oscillating. So yeah, don't just like I don't know. Don't just submit for the sake of submitting in a problem But that's just what I have to say Only focus don't focus so much on speed only try to solve the next problem that you couldn't solve So if you're at like if you could solve the first problem already Underneath 10 minutes try to solve the second problem or the third problem And if you could solve the first problem and the second problem at least 30 minutes Then you should probably you should still try to solve the third problem problem C because that's what really matters Yeah, so like here in my Recent contest like I solved the first one in 17 minutes, which doesn't really which is okay In my opinion like if you try to solve it in five minutes I don't I don't see the reason that typing speed would increase but the second problem. I solved it in 49 minutes and that actually does help you that boosted my rating way significantly being able to solve the second problem from here here to here 830 to like nine like plus Plus 156 from being able to solve the second problem instead of just focusing on speed being able to solve the first problem So yeah, just focus on solving the next problem in competitive programming and then I think speed would follow after with that There's really no reason to just try to Minimize the how the time you spend on the first problem Like solving easy problems. That's not gonna help you. Yeah, that's just what my opinion is. Hope you guys know this video Ray come subscribe. I'll show you guys later. Peace