For a long time, I thought my problem was that I didn't know enough.
So I tried to learn more.
More tutorials. More topics. More notes saved "for later."
But when I started looking into data structures and algorithms, everything suddenly felt... heavy. Not impossible. Just overwhelming.
Too many concepts at once. Too much theory before I could actually use anything. Too much pressure to understand everything perfectly.
That's when I realized something.
The real struggle wasn't coding. It was thinking clearly.
When "DSA is hard" actually means "I feel lost"
When I felt stuck, it wasn't because I couldn't write code.
It was because I didn't know where to start. I didn't know what actually mattered right now. And I was trying to hold too many ideas in my head at once.
The problem wasn't knowledge. It was clarity.
So instead of pushing harder, I just... slowed down.
I stopped trying to learn everything at once
I didn't sit down to "master DSA."
I focused on a few things that helped me think better:
Writing out what I wanted to do before coding it. Understanding time and space complexity enough to ask "is this reasonable?" Knowing what arrays, stacks, queues, and hash maps are actually useful for. Learning sorting and searching as ways to organize my thinking. Solving problems slowly, without rushing to the "right" answer.
No timelines. No pressure. Just trying to understand.
Things got clearer when I slowed down
Once I stopped memorizing and started connecting things, learning felt lighter.
I wasn't collecting information anymore. I was building understanding.
My process started looking like this:
Try to solve a problem. Notice where I get confused. Learn just that missing piece. Try again.
That loop made everything feel way more manageable.
What I've realized as a beginner
I don't need to know everything yet.
I just need to understand the problem in front of me.
When I focus on that, better questions show up naturally:
What is this problem actually asking? What kind of data am I working with? What happens in edge cases?
That's when coding starts feeling less like guessing and more like thinking.
Final thought
Tools will change. Languages will change. Even AI is changing how we write code.
But clear thinking? That'll always matter.
And right now, that's what I'm trying to get better at.
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