Every wrong submission is just XP in disguise.

If you’ve ever opened LeetCode, stared at a “Medium” problem, and immediately felt like an imposter in your own career welcome, you’re home.

For the longest time, I treated LeetCode like a punishment. Every night:

• Me: “One more question before bed.”
• Brain: “How about we stare at it until 3AM and still not solve it?”

After months of pretending that “Daily Challenges” were personality traits, I realized something most of us aren’t bad at LeetCode, we’re just training wrong.

So, I decided to turn LeetCode into a game, not a chore. Here’s what changed everything.

Level 1: Stop Grinding, Start Strategizing

I stopped doing random problems and started theme weeks:

• Week 1: Arrays & Two Pointers (the gym warm-up of DSA)
• Week 2: HashMaps & Sliding Window (where logic meets chaos)
• Week 3: Trees (the moment your confidence collapses)

Each week, I did 5–7 problems of the same type until I could predict the pattern without crying.

Level 2: Rename the Pain

I stopped calling them “Hard Problems” and renamed them “Boss Fights.” It sounds dumb, but it’s psychology. When I failed a problem, I just said, “Okay, the boss won this round.” Next day? Rematch.

Level 3: Learn Like a Developer, Not Like a Student

I started using a GitHub repo to store every solved problem not copy-pasted code, but my explanations. Something like this:

• Problem: Two Sum
• Concept: HashMap lookup in O(n)
• Lesson: Never trust nested loops.

Now, every time I forgot something, I could review my own logic, not someone else’s YouTube tutorial.

Level 4: Compete with Your Past Self

Instead of chasing ranks, I compared how long I took to solve similar problems. At first: 40 minutes. After two weeks: 12 minutes. After a month: 8 minutes and mild emotional damage, but progress nonetheless.

Level 5: Don’t Aim for 100 Problems. Aim for 10 That Stick.

Everyone loves saying “I solved 300 LeetCode problems.” Cool flex. But can you explain five of them from scratch without opening notes? Mastering a few problems deeply helps more than speed-running 100 with no recall.

What Happened After 30 Days

• My problem-solving confidence skyrocketed.
• Interviews started making more sense.
• And most importantly I no longer feared “Medium” tags like they were horoscopes of doom.

LeetCode stopped being a torture device and became a skill gym. You don’t need to love DSA. You just need to trick your brain into thinking it’s playing a strategy game.

TL;DR

LeetCode isn’t about brute force it’s about pattern recognition, smart review, and consistency. So next time you open a problem and feel that existential dread? Just remember: you’re not failing LeetCode. You’re just in the tutorial level.

Your turn:

What about you? What’s your weirdest or funniest LeetCode ritual? Do you code with snacks by your side, rage-quit after two wrong submissions, or explain your logic out loud like you’re hosting a TED Talk in your room?

Drop your confession in the comments let’s make everyone feel a little less alone in this algorithm chaos.