This plan is for the person with a solid month before their interview, an evening or two most nights, and a goal of covering every pattern rather than picking a few and hoping. At roughly 8 hours a week, all ten patterns fit, but the 30 extra practice problems do not. This is the plan that trades depth for breadth: you'll see every pattern at least once.

If your interview is closer than a month, the one-week plan triages down to four patterns instead of ten. If you have closer to three months, the three-month plan covers the same ten patterns plus every extra problem, at a slower pace. You can also build a version of this tuned to your exact date and hours at /plan.

The math: about five weeks at 8 hours a week

The estimates here assume a lesson takes about 40 minutes, an easy problem about 25, a medium about 40, and a hard about 55, plus a 15-minute practice quiz round every week to keep the ten patterns from blurring together. Ten lessons and their core problems, minus the extras, add up to a little over 34 hours of content. Spread across roughly 8 hours a week, that lands at about five weeks, which is a bit more than a calendar month but close enough that most people finish inside four to five weeks depending on their actual pace.

Week by week

Week 1. The Start Here and Patterns Pyramid readings, then Two Pointers and Sliding Window in full. About 8 hours, the heaviest week since it includes the intro reading.

Week 2. Intervals and Linked List Manipulation. About 7 hours.

Week 3. Modified Binary Search and Tree Breadth First Search. About 7 hours.

Week 4. Graph Breadth First Search and Graph Depth First Search. The lightest week, about 6 and a half hours, so there is a little slack if a previous week ran long.

Week 5. Backtracking and Dynamic Programming, the last two patterns in the syllabus, plus a mock interview to close things out. About 7 hours 40 minutes.

What gets cut, and what to do if you finish early

This plan skips the extra practice problems, three per pattern, 30 in total. They're good problems, they just are not required to have seen every pattern at least once, which is the goal here. If a week goes faster than planned, the extras for that week's pattern are the natural thing to add back in, or take a second look at the practice quiz to check what actually stuck.

Dates and hours differ for everyone. Build your own plan.

The planner leaves room for life getting in the way, so at the same hours it may trim a bit more than this page. If you want everything in, give it an hour or two more per week.