Hey Man dw! Just start slow get habitual of solving the questions by trying to solve the dsa sheets so many people have made those.. so easy to find. Then try to solve the previous contest problems you will get better with time!! More on reddit.com

just start solving problems More on reddit.com

I don't agree. Topic-based learning is definitely the way to go. As you mentioned, USACO is by far the best tool (free or paid) for cp improvement, and topic-based Codeforces gyms are good too. You should only solve random problems during contests or when timing yourself while solving a contest. It's much easier to recognize patterns when you have solved many problems on a specific topic. Sure, you might solve the same amount of problems by solving them randomly, but it's just not the same. You tend to forget certain problem types over time. You're correct that some topic-based courses aren't structured properly, consider this: Codeforces' easier problems (800–1500) are mostly greedy/ad-hoc or binary search. For a beginner, it's far more challenging to start by solving random problems, learn from tutorials, and then suddenly move on to 1600+ level problems—they will struggle so much. New Topics like graphs, bitwise operations, dynamic programming, and math will pop up which takes months of practice to master. They are just better studied in a structured, topic-wise manner. More on reddit.com