Hi! It's been a while. My YT has certainly changed direction, but that's beside the point. I have been "silently" grinding for LGM over the past few months and sporadically earlier — avoiding explicitly doing contests, but doing plenty of virtuals and general practice. For now, I would put myself in the 2800s rating-wise (for a more detailed and dynamically updated log of the virtuals, see here).
I want to hold myself accountable better. Getting myself to wake up is pretty damn hard. So I've opted to stream my grind over my winter break from college (roughly 3 more weeks of break, and probably streaming throughout school too), not only for myself, but as some sort of motivation for everyone to work harder (perhaps to create an environment where one can tune in and grind for themselves alongside).
Logistics: I won't have a set start time, it will be soon after I wake up each day. I will aim for relative consistency, but no promises. It will run $$$\in [8, 12]$$$ hours each day in general, and start today/tomorrow, in roughly 12 hours. NOTE that you don't need to put nearly as much time in to improve well at CP, it's just the amount of time I'm willing to spend for now.
The first day's stream will be on my main channel to let my YT audience know, and the rest will be on a new one. It will be on every day except Sundays. I'll put it on CF's "stream tab" for the first two days, then leave it alone.
Plan: I will probably grind problems from recent CF rounds for a while, then finish each stream with an ARC virtual (I've found that I need to get better under contest pressure) and a brief analysis, I guess. I will mostly be doing 3000+ problems from CF, so unless you're red, you don't have to worry about spoilers except for the ARC's. For the sake of not exhausting myself, there will be no facecam. Sorry.
UPD: Per a request, I've added a log of the problems I've done. It will also be in the description of each stream (if I remember)
Good luck Colin!
Noice
i simp for colin
i call in for simp
Good Luck
Best of Luck
All the Best...LGM soon
Good luck, and I'll drop in when I can!
Good luck.
Orz
Hello, I am your biggest fan.
False I'm his biggest fan
Good luck! Been watching some of your videos since 2021 and they were very helpful and instructive. Will be fun to watch your practice to achieving LGM.
Good luck ! Dont forget to stay consistent , you probably dont need this advice but most people quickly burn up after putting immense hours for a short period of time and not getting results. Be sure not to do that , I hope you can get to LGM !
gl hf, do not burn out
I see in your sheet "performance", "rating", "change".
Where do you see those after the virtual contest?
stan colin
Nice to know that everyone has to work hard to improve to the next level. That's reassuring and motivational at the same time.
I can barely do 4 hours of problem solving, I want to see how you can do it for a full 8 hours and learn a little! Good luck
Wow, Good Luck!
I am curious to know what do you use for simulating the rating changes for CF virtual contests?
I think it is Codeforces Visualizer: https://cfviz.netlify.app/virtual-rating-change.html
Good luck!
Hope that you will reach LGM soon colin.
Btw, love your content! Keep it going!
Nice Galen, I hope u are doing well... best luck in ur new venture...
And I thought he quit , damn he's unstoppable
Thanks for this blog .I am aiming for expert during school .much of winter holidays went in vain.
Day 1 done! Went for ~11 hours as promised. Please note that, as mentioned, it will be on the new channel for the rest of the streams, and I will only put it on the CF stream tab again for the next stream.
If you want better notifications, subscribe to the new channel (noting that it won't actually give you notifications unless you click the bell) and/or join my discord to get pings about it.
This will be the only such comment and update to the blog, I don't intend to spam it.
Good Luck Colin!
non-technical question __ how do you keep grinding for 10hrs + without eating / drinking ? what preparation you do before starting ?
I do eat (usually two things throughout) — though if it's hard to notice $$$\to$$$ not disruptive, that's good
Good luck ! I've always found your content inspiring, so I hope your hard work will pay off !
Has the grind stopped?
see discord (#stream-times) for updates (there will be another one fairly soon)
Do you practice apart from streams too? And what do you do in breaks?
Question from Your fan: When will u stream ur push LGM_Ifti?
How do you calculate the performance column in the log?
carrot gives a performance column for rated participants in standings, then i take mine to be the perf of the nearest rated guy below me