Hello,

I had participated in a lot of online contest before.

I realised that I did better in long term contest (codechef long challenge, etc..) than short term contest (codeforces, topcoder).

But I'm afraid of what long term contest teach me:

• I don't need to worry about time
• I don't need to care about time management (Usually, I won't read other problem before I solve current problem)
• I have a lot of time to optimise my solution
• I have time to write brute-force solution and generator when I can't find mistake in my solution. (- debugging skill)

After doing many long term contest, I feel that long term contest also affect my performance in short term contest (including IOI/ACM ICPC), like being stuck on a problem (One of the reason I didn't get medal on IOI).

In fact, long term contest also affect me when training, I prefer to solve the problem by myself even when it took me a whole day because I feel that I have unlimited time.

What do you think ?

Learning from my mistake in IOI, I want to improve in short term contest. What do you think is a good training plan ? Do you think it is better to solve a problem by yourself after spending all day or try to think for like 30 minutes then read editorial ?