So this post is little different. This post doesn't intend to preach ways to get good at LC and crack that dream offer.
Instead this post goes on about bringing in structure to your preparation, being organised and determined about your plan and making it a success story.
Background and credentials: I have been working with Microsoft for a while and going to join LinkedIn at SSE role. I made up my mind to shake off the old rust and prepare for interviews somewhere around mid August'20.
Immediately I knew that going without a plan into LC was not going to take me anywhere. If at all anything, I'hd have memoized bunch of easy and medium questions and no, that wasn't the plan.
I do have few OCDs and one particular OCD came in very handy in this plan. Obsessing over time management and bringing structure to the process and that's how OCDs made part of the title.
I dug few apps related to clocking laps / countdown timers / countup counters and stumbled across this beauty.
Attached is the screenshot and config which worked for me.
Briefly getting into explaining those colorful circles.
The first row has countup timers for LC prep (LC questions: try, debug, discuss, read solution cycle),
HLD prep (YT vods, Edu___ve grok, G__gl_ searches),
DDEA (The one and only, book! although tbh I din't reach all that far, clearly)
Second row has a personal literature reading timer (Current book: 100 years of solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a must read btw),
Persistence backlog is something I came up with to represent number of interesting LC questions I had not jotted down yet in my personal notes.
TIP: Try and fix (OCD!) on a number. For me, I never let this number cross 10. Typically I would find 10 interesting questions every week and take a day to write them in full details. This is important. You need these to have a quick revision set of questions that YOU found interesting. Not LC, Not CF, Not company tagged ones, YOU!
Next one is simple. Number of interview rounds! Important to keep in sight that how have you improved over the number of interviews.
Finally, next row is easy to comprehend, yet very powerful. You need to have these numbers floating in your head. Sure, I did just 1 hard but that's okay, it's more than zero :D
Fourth row! The LC timers done right - First circle is how much time you take on a LC question if you plan on solving it independent of any deadline and yes I took 1h:28m to solve a medium! Not anything to be proud of but hey, it's okay!
next 2 timers are count down alarms which ring 1 bell at 30 mins and 3 bells at 45 mins. A typical interview setting.
This setup helped me immensely in the process. Sure the numbers in third row are rookie and probably experts here grind more than that number everyday XD but the number is not at all important and that's the topic for some other day.
That's it for now folks :)
I'l write more if there is enouh traction. Don't hesitate to ask questions. Be inquisitive. Stay hungry stay foolish :)