In need of some general advice

I am finding myself in a kind of weird spot. To be more particular, until around a few months ago I didn’t know the more advanced data structures like treaps etc. But during then I used to try and be creative about the problem. Like I used to try everything, I even came up with HLD and preferred path decomposition on my own.
But now after going through all of this, I feel my thinking has become a bit mechanical. What I mean is, subconciously, I’m no longer just experimenting with the problems, I just think “Is it treaps? Is it link cut trees? Is it …” and I feel that this is a flipside of learning more: instead of trying to do new stuff I’m trying to fit it into standard categories. As a result I don’t solve as many questions as I should be able to because with such mechanical thinking I miss out key observations.
To those of you who did all these advanced topics did you ever face this issue?

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I don’t know about others, but yes, it happens, happened to me as well. And your answer is you will overcome this phase soon in your own unique way! Everything will be okay! CP is beautiful!

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@anon25504910 First of all , you seem like a pro …anyways , yes, i am just getting out of that phase and i also have the answer for your question . The reason is that when we learn a new algo or DS , we are passionate about applying it somewhere and prove ourselves that we learnt something new . Say if we are learning segment tree , we always think of proving the problem to be solved using segment tree rather than solving it in an adhoc manner . Because of this mentality , we will excuse ourselves by looking at some problems . The key solution is to practice two pointer , implementation problems on coderforces everyday :slight_smile:

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I liked being called a pro, thanks but no :sweat_smile: im just another guy(currently) learning algos and dsa :sweat_smile:. Id surely like to be a pro someday though (hopefully soon :smile:).
You have a good point. I’ll do what you suggested. Thanks!

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