Stopped counting LeetCode problems, started counting patterns. Best decision of my grind.

For months I chased a number. Got to 200-something solved and still froze on anything I hadn't seen before. Switched to grouping by pattern — sliding window, two pointers, monotonic stack, that sort of thing — and drilling one until it felt boring. I'm at maybe 45 problems now and calmer in interviews than I was at 200. I'd basically been collecting solutions instead of learning to spot the shape of a problem.