Hi all, like all the hard working people in this community , I also started my journey a few months ago. When I first started, I was really excited and within a month completed 100 Leetcode questions, took another month to revise them and another month to complete all explore cards. I am an experienced developer so Leetcode is not enough, I needed to prepare sys design as well.

Started preparing system design side by side that turned out to be another level of DS Algo beast. I am overwhlemed. I read system design and forget how to solve DS questionns. I do leetcode, I forget sys design. Doing all this, I have started forgetting what I actually do at my work, my domain knowledge and all that stuff just vanishing.

I have yet to feel comfortable to schedule a mock interview, let alone the actual one. What am I doing wrong? It feels like everyday I am starting from 0 with no progress at all. There are tons of notes , It would need a significant amount just to revise them and many new topics still untouched.

Please guide me if anything worked for you. A little bit about me - I am a backend engineer (not product based company)with 8 YOE , little experience with system design but I have read standard books and trying to grasp as much as I can and also using grok*** . My issue is I am not able to handle both algo/Ds and system design at the same time. ALso, I am really really weak technically(thats what I feel after seeing questions asked from FAANG) so it's like I am starting from zero every day.

Do I forget about my dream and keep working where I work and let months of preparation go to waste or is there a light at the end? Am I doing anything wrong?