Basically title and what to do next. I have been leetcoding not consistently in the past months and did about 90 problems, (30 mediums, 60 easy). Some of them I didn't solve and I looked up the solution to hopefully learn. Some of them I really struggled and solved after a long time. Now I still can't solve easy ones and feel like no progress has been made. There's definitely a problem in my preparation, or my brain, or my focus. What do you recommend to do? I write code in my day job, but that's not hard, not so much logic and algo thinking in it. I'm admittedly not particularly smart.
You need a mentor/tutor.
How to find leetcode/algo mentor or tutor? Not a bad idea
You can either pay for one on wyzant or similar apps or if you're young and live near a college campus see if there's a group that meets for algorithm practice
The dumber you are the harder you are going to have to practice. Hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard. Also mentorship is important. Don't get scammed though by all those bullshit tutors promising to help you with interviews.
What scams??
How long have you been at it? I find a lot of times people complain about being bad at something they’re relatively new at.
Have you watched YouTube videos of people solving them? Maybe that better aligns to your learning style
Sounds like your mindset needs some work, if you keep telling yourself you’re dumb you’ll subconsciously doubt any leads your brain might form when tackling a new problem
I think you can overcome it with sweat. Problems start to look similar after you do enough of them.
Take a legit course in algorithms and data structures, if you already took one in college take a different one. Try to understand how and why to solve the problems instead of how to win at leetcode
> Some of them I didn't solve and I looked up the solution to hopefully learn. Don’t read the whole solution. Only read the first sentence, then go back and see if you can make progress. It’s okay if you can’t, but put in a good amount of struggle. Your mind will think in new directions. Then read the next sentence of the solution. Go back again and see if you can make more progress. Keep doing this and your mind will learn how to generate such “hints” by itself. This is like “negative” reps in strength training, when someone helps you lift the weight and then you let it go down very slowly. It builds muscle even if you can’t lift the whole weight by yourself at first. After a while you’ll be able to lift it without help.
Take a sligtly reliable IQ test maybe, if you get anything above 105, you are not dumb for sure, then u get some confidence and you can pratice, or maybe just look at your grades, college education, if you were not intelligent, you would not have been where you are, just have a positive attitude.
Be more like Will Smith. He’s (a) bright.
Swing and a miss
Good movie tho