Hello, CodeForces!
Recently, one of my students had a really bad contest. Even though he worked really hard in the last couple months, he could not pass an important qualifying round of an arguably easy, new, Romanian contest. The first 4 'official' contestants qualified, and sadly he was the fifth. He was really upset after the contest, and had a hard time gathering enough motivation/discipline to continue working, because there were scenarios in his head such as "what if this will happen in training camp?" or "what not passing had a really bad turn on my future?"
Today, I am going to share with you all a simple method that can help you get over a bad contest or just motivate you to work more in general. Keep in mind, I am not a specialist in this domain, I am only a teacher with experience, so there might be better methods out there, but throughout the years I have seen that what you are about to read worked best on many of the my students. I advise you to also read this great self deception blog, as it will surely help you too.
I am sure that many of you have had issues in the past having consistency in working, after all we are not perfect. From time to time there are just days in which we feel really bad about ourselves for no apparent reason, but keep in mind I said apparent. There is a reason behind everything, nothing is at random. I feel like the top three most common reasons for not wanting to work are: having a recent bad contest, getting bullied by friends based on past results, and too much dopamine in your brain. So, I will tell you how I would get over all of these scenarios.
Having a recent bad contest
This is a really common thing. Nobody can have a perfect accuracy in contest and always be the best, not even the top legendary grandmasters such as tourist and Benq. The thing that will help you most is upsolving problems / reading the editorial right after the contest. This is a relatively sneaky thing that tricks your brain into "coming at peace" with the contest. Not only does it do that, but it also helps you:
acknowledge your mistakes in-contest
see what you should have prepared better for
improves your mentality and mental strength, as having the courage to read editorials and upsolve right after a contest which you are sad about trains your brain to quit the sadness quickly, and turns it into productivity.
Getting Bullied
It happens in Romania a lot, but less in other countries. Result-based bullying can be the extremely destructive if it reaches to you. The best thing you can do is either work so hard you constantly outperform the bullies in contests, and use their bullying as your drive, or tell a parent/teacher/psychologist about the fact that you cannot take it in any longer. It is ok to not want to tell a person you know about this, so I have provided you with this hotline in case you feel more comfortable talking it over the phone with a specialist.
Excessive Dopamine
The worse possible one of the first three is getting addicted to random things. I am not only talking about substances like alcohol and nicotine, but also about short, brain-washing videos, that gradually decrease your concentration capacity, your motivation, your power of will, your results and even the ability to interact functionally and not get bored after 2 minutes.
To keep it short, when your brain sees something/does something it likes/wants, it releases dopamine (not oxytocin, that is released when loving a person, and it doesn't really affect you academically). It is the mechanism that creates addictions. Many people release insane amounts of dopamine when using their devices in the form of "entertainment". I am talking about that relaxed feeling you get, when watching a YouTube video on the couch Sunday afternoon, with nothing left to do. The sad thing is that for most children/teenagers, this "Sunday afternoon" is not only Sunday afternoon, but more like whenever they feel like somebody is not looking at them, might that be a teacher in class or a parent at home. The hardest part of quitting this is realizing this type of behaviour is from all possible points of view wrong and distructive towards your future, so try using this blog as a signal.
Whenever you feel like not practicing in your free time, and you want to entertain yourself on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, or any other social media, just sleep. Lack of sleep is also an extremely common issue in peoples lives, so you probably felt tired and miserable anyway. Even something short like half an hour of good sleep can boost you concentration. At the end of the day, what do you get by staring on your phone without being able to stop? Nothing good! But by practicing CP, not only do you gain knowledge, but you also build a routine, you discipline yourself, and these sort of thing are an important quality in whatever else topic you work in / study.
Other reasons
This is on a more general note. I find William Lin's videos have a huge impact on my students, to some sort of extent, he is their idol. I have observed the fact that he is well known throughout the community, and nobody hates him. Seeing other people practice and succeed subconsciously tricks you into thinking the same about yourself, so if you set a goal to succeed in CP and you watch a couple of his videos, motivation should come to you in a flash.
This was quite about what I had to say about motivation. I repeat, I am not an specialist in this domain, I am only an experienced teacher.
Happy coding, and I am wishing you all a positive delta!
Cristofor
