Learning, Failing and Growth Through 1000 DSA Problems

If you ask someone in tech, whether a student or a working professional, what’s that one thing they should focus on to grow or get into a good tech company, maybe a big MNC or even FAANG/MAANG, most of the time you’ll hear the same answer, practice DSA.

Hello my friend, I am Priyanshu Chaurasiya. Like you, I also heard the same advice, do DSA. I followed it, and today I have solved 1000+ problems on LeetCode. But wait… this blog is not about flexing that number. This is about what I learned between problem 0 and problem 1000, the mistakes, the mindset, the approach, what actually works and what doesn’t. Solving 1000 problems won’t directly help you, but understanding these lessons definitely will. So grab your coffee, and let’s talk honestly.

I guess I already hinted at it, it was a rat race.

If you are in tech, everyone around you says the same thing, do DSA. Friends, seniors, LinkedIn posts, YouTube videos, everywhere you hear this. My reason was no different. I didn’t start because I loved problem-solving. I started because I felt I had to.

But over time, I realized something important. DSA is not bad. The problem is the mindset. If I treat it as just getting my code accepted, then it becomes frustrating. But if I treat it as a way to improve logical thinking, then it becomes powerful.

I didn’t take any paid courses or follow anything fancy. Everything I learned came from freely available online resources.

In the beginning, I followed Striver’s A2Z DSA Sheet. That helped me a lot because it removed randomness. I wasn’t jumping from one random problem to another, I was following a structured path from easy to medium to tricky problems. Along with that, I watched Striver’s YouTube videos to understand concepts.