u/ConsciousMortgage828

Hey everyone,

I recently had to take a extended break from LeetCode and completely lost my streak and momentum. Before the break, I was solving questions regularly and felt comfortable with problem-solving patterns.

Now that I'm trying to pick it back up, I feel like I've hit a wall—questions I used to handle easily now feel difficult, and my pattern recognition feels rusty.

I’d love to get some advice from anyone who has dealt with this:

1. Why does this happen? Is it just skill decay, or is it mostly mental friction from starting over?
2. How do I overcome it? What are the best strategies to rebuild confidence and problem-solving speed without getting burnt out?

If you've successfully gotten your flow back after taking time off, what worked best for you?

Hey typists,

I’ve hit a bit of a wall with endurance. My short burst speed feels great, but as soon as I move to longer tests, my WPM drops significantly and my accuracy slips. My hands and focus just seem to lose momentum halfway through.

For anyone who’s overcome this:

• Should I force myself to stick to longer tests, or keep training burst speed and let endurance catch up?
• Is this usually a pacing problem, finger fatigue, or a sign I'm pushing faster than my muscle memory allows?

Any tips or routine adjustments that helped you break through would be huge. Thanks!

I first solved this using to_string(sum) to check the first and last digits. It passed 714/715 test cases but got TLE on the last one.

I then replaced to_string() with a while loop to extract the first digit, and it got accepted.

Conceptually, both approaches still have the same nested loops. Why does one pass while the other doesn't? Is this purely due to constant factors, or is there a complexity difference I'm overlooking?

Every day I hear words like DSA, OOPS, DBMS, SQL, MERN, Full Stack, Agentic AI, Vibe Coding and honestly... I barely know what most of them mean.

My friends talk about projects, internships, and tech like it's normal, while I'm still figuring out the basics.

Sometimes I feel so behind that I avoid joining these conversations because I don't want to sound dumb.

Did anyone else start from this point? How did you catch up?

​

Click to view my previous post: