3 Things Athletic Training can teach you about Interview Preparation [StoryTime Saturdays]
This kind of approach will lead to peak performance and the best results in your preparation
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A lot of you found me (and this newsletter) through my articles about interview preparation,
I’ve written online about my system and it helps people ace their interviews to get into their dream companies. In this email/post I will share one of the most important elements of my tutoring system- the underlying skeleton of the system. This skeleton provides the guideline on how I recommend preparing your system. By the end of this article, you will have a complete outline of how you should prepare for your self-studying system- whether it’s for upcoming coding interviews, exams, or for self-studying difficult topics.
And don’t worry. This system does NOT involve solving 500+ Leetcode Problems, spending hours per day studying, or many (any) sleepless nights. All of these are extremely inefficient, and honestly- a giant waste of your time and energy. I would prefer you spend your time and energy doing something you actually enjoy.
This system was inspired by athletic training. I’ve played sports/athletics pretty much since my childhood, and a lot of my philosophy borrows heavily from training/my experiences playing sports. It has been one of the most important parts of my life. The lessons discussed today will however be applicable to your journey both on and off the field.
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Key Highlights
Matches are won off the field- When you or I sit down to watch the Manchester Derby tomorrow, we see a 90-minute football match. The players however have been training every day for this. The result of the match is not determined in those 90 minutes. It is determined in the 2-4 hour practice sessions, media tours, kitchens, and recovery sessions. The matches are just for us to see who did it better. Your interview is not the battle to win. The preparation up to your interview is the battle you should focus on.
Importance of Rest- This point is important enough to warrant it’s own section. Rest. Overworking will just fry your system. I know all these sigma-males on LinkedIn love to talk about how they slept only 4 hours and did 500+ questions, but all of that is unnecessary. The most important thing you can do for your career (and your life) is to be well-rested. It will pay a lot of dividends and help you avoid burnout (which is a killer in tech).
Focus on basics.- Sports and Tech have one thing in common- the fields are always changing. The paradigm 2 years ago is not the same as the paradigm today. How can you excel in these ever-changing fields? Master the fundamentals. Whether it’s counter-attack, tiki-taka, or gegenpress- a footballer with great athletic ability, passing, and work rate will always be in mind.
Sound like your jam? Let’s get right into it.
Matches are won off the field
This is the mentality you need to adopt to really take your interview prep to the next level. Too many people make the mistake of treating like their interview as one singular event that determines whether they get in or not. That is not true. The interview is merely a proxy for how effective your learning system was.
This might sound like generic self-help to a lot of you, but the implications of this are more important than you would think. If you don’t have the entire process done well, you’re compromising your chances of acing the interviews. If you’re stressed because of poor sleep, lack of water, a bad diet, or bad health in general, then your learning and interview performance will be compromised. Even if you did ace your interviews once, what happens if you decide to switch jobs? As I’ve covered, job switching is one of the best ways to gain pay raises/promotions. You will have to go through the pain of interview prep all over again You would have forgotten most of what you learned. Similar to students that crammed for exams one night before and then forgot what they learned very quickly. If you have seen a Leetcode problem, not been able to solve it, ‘understood’ it only to not be able to solve it one week later, then you know what I’m talking about.
The better approach is to broaden your scope. The interview is not the match you’re playing to win. It’s merely a checkpoint, where you demonstrate how awesome your skills are. The battle you win happens every day, with yourself. You have to find some time to methodically study, make sure you’re getting a lot of rest + exercise+ nutrition, network with people who can get you interesting roles, and balance all this with your personal life. If you can balance all this, then your interviews are sorted.
Let me give you a personal example. I often have very senior people read my articles and reach out to me. They tell me about interesting roles/projects, some of which I have to interview for. These projects require immediate starts and because of all my commitments, I don’t have much time to dedicate to interview prep either way. But I’m still able to do pretty well. This is because, I have built up a body of work in Machine Learning and AI, and thus I can do well when it comes to them. Thus my life outside of the interviews, directly helps me succeed in the interview.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t carry over as neatly for Leetcode-style interviews. Leetcode problems are very gimmicky, and unless you’re a competitive programmer for fun, it’s not something that will integrate into your life easily. You will have to bite the bullet and grind through it. However, this you can still apply this approach to gain better results-
When you’re preparing for Leetcode Interviews- Don’t just get into LC at the cost of your health/life. Do 1-2 hours of preparation daily. You can do more on weekends, but space it out. Take things slowly, and really integrate what you’re doing. Make sure you eat the right calories+ nutrition, sleep a lot, exercise, take lots of breaks, and track your progress through various questions. Do this, and you will get what you want. Even if one FAANG interview slips you, you’ll ace 5 more. And your preparation will feel a lot smoother, letting you level up. Never burn yourself out for one interview. This will crash your physical and mental health and will not let you enjoy the fruits of your labor.
When you’re not actively preparing- If you have come across an amazing job and aren’t looking for an immediate switch, then great work. First- Take a break, because you deserve it. However, when that is done, make sure you keep studying your domain/field. If you’re an AI guy, read the papers. If you’re a cloud peep, look into what’s poppin over there. Follow your domain and continue to master it. This way, when you do switch over to the Leetcode prep phase, you will have one less thing to worry about. And learning about your field is the only way to make sure you’re recession-proof.
You might think that a lot of my focus (sleep lots, diet, exercise) has nothing to do with interview preparation. However, that is where you would be wrong. These are critical to your preparation. Let’s cover how.
Rest- The most important (and overlooked) component of training
Take a look at the following chart-
Notice how many side-effects affect your mental ability. ADHD-like behavior, cognitive impairment, memory loss, body aches and more will destroy your learning ability. What would have taken you 1 hour will now take 6. Memory loss means that you likely won’t even be retain what you learned, negating any long-term benefits you would have gained from this process. Does that sound like something that you would want?
That’s why Rest is something that you should be working into your process, always. A good diet will bring similar kinds of benefits- allowing you to learn better for a longer period of time. And exercise has been empirically proven to boost your brain’s capabilities, making you better at learning. Below is a talk by Harvard giving more details.
These lead back to the last point- Matches are won off the field. Large parts of your performance will be determined by your life setup. Good sleep, diet, and exercise will allow you to study well, without breaking down. You will also have to study effectively ofcourse, but that is moot if you don’t have these 3 under control. Without these pillars, your body will collapse.
Rest is especially important because it is the most overlooked. It is also the most impactful. Lack of rest will shut you down, physically and mentally. Don’t listen to these fake gurus preaching the benefits of 18-hour days, and their sigma grindset. If you study well for 1-2 hours (on top of your work), then you have to take the rest of the day off to recover. This is non-negotiable. There is nothing in the world losing sleep over, least of all a silly interview
These pillars are amazing for a solid foundation. But you have to build on that. So how can you set up your studying system to allow yourself to master a complex field like tech? One that is ever-changing? Once again, we can look at athletes for a hint.
Focus on the Basics
Sports are chaotic. Things are always changing. A few years ago, the common sentiment in Football was that number 9s (strikers responsible for scoring) were dead. Now Lewandowski, Benzema, and Haaland are tearing defenses a new one. In MMA, calf-kicks went from being unknown to lethal in a few years. Steph Curry changed 3-pointers forever. Sports and their metas are always in flux.
The secret my friends is in focusing on the foundations. The basics will help you adapt to whatever the cool new thing is. When I talked to Sajid, a senior AWS architect, he mentioned that the skills required for Cloud computing were very basic software developer skills. Technologies and frameworks change. The foundations don’t.
I say this is a lot, but only because this can’t be stressed enough. The basics will carry you forward.
How can you learn the basics? I have tons of posts covering various topics. I also recommend a lot of other creators throughout my writing, so following them will give you a very strong foundation. Use them all, and you will be set.
In order to not go too long, I will end this post here. There are tons of learnings that sports and athletics can teach us about learning new skills and studying more effectively. If you want more such examples, let me know and I will add that in. I have found that using sports as an analogy is a great way to get my point across to my students, and if this was useful, I can do more posts like this.
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Go kill all,
Devansh <3
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