Usual shameless self-advertisement!

Hey, guys! Lately I have seen a lot of my buddies' productivity graphs looking like this:

So, I've decided to share 3 tips from my life experience about how I manage to keep myself motivated, focus and productive as hell.

P.S: I am a Computer Science student auto-isolated in my dorm room. We are talking about 40 m³ here. It's pretty easy for a guy like me to get nuts in a situation like this. So let's get it started:

1. Put on a suit!

No bro, I'm not joking. It might sound stupid, but it's a game changer. As I said, I live in a dorm room, so it's really easy to get off track when your bed is literally 0.5 meters away from the table you study. The table you study on is the same one you eat on. Then I have the sink 2 meters away.

This setup almost screams a schedule like: wake up late, then watch some funny Youtube video, then eat something, take another nap, brush your teeth and play computer games. By putting a suit on, I imagine I am the CEO of my company, the king of my empire.

Yes, my empire is a dorm room, but every king with his empire. So it's a psychological anchor for me: when I have the suit on, I am beast mode. I work. I don't eat with a suit on, I don't play with a suit on, I don't sleep with a suit on. I just work.

Try it for 2 days. You don't have a suit? That's cool. Jeans and a t-shirt should do it. Anything else but pyjamas or underwear. You're a coder, not Superman!

2. Stay away from unhealthy food!

I know we are all programmers and we care about the mind, not the body yada yada, bullshit! Point me to one guy who would like to look like this:

Exactly. Take care of your body. Stop eating all that processed food which has got 0 calories, 0 fats, 100% sugar. It does not just ruin your body, it ruins your mind too. It becomes blurry, your energy drops significantly as your insulin spikes to the roof. It puts you down. And the last things you want in this period is to get sick and to not be able to use your mind at it's full potential.

Fix your diet. Meditate. Exercise. I was isolated in this dorm room(you can watch the video to see how small it is) for 2 weeks. And I have worked out each single day. And I hit every muscle group. You can be red on codeforces but you can't do 1 push up. No excuses bro!

3. Build a tribe!

You might look at some guys in thee community who are really good and they seem to be forever alone. No one is. They had coaches, they had buddies as good as them who they trained with. You need that. You need 2-3 people to train with.

(But yeah, please don't touch hands and keep it virtual in this period)

You will push each other's limits, you will motivate each other, set weekly challenges, contests, do CF virtual rounds and upsolve together. You don't have any friends? Dude, if you are reading this, then look where you are!

This is like the New York of Competitive Programming. It's impossible to not meet people and make friends. Even Errichto was kind to respond to my message about a YouTube collaboration when I had 300 subscribers.

Keep hustling and stay safe!