August 2026 — Monthly Plan
August 2026
Starts Jul 29 (the DSA restart) rather than Aug 1 — no reason to throw away 3 days waiting for a calendar boundary. Runs through Aug 31.
→ Live day-to-day: [[Interview Prep/Dashboard]] | Full history: [[Interview Prep/Coach Hub]]
Carried in from July (completed-things summary)
DSA: patterns 01-09 done (Arrays/Hashing → Tries+Heap), all PASS STRONG through W05 (Jun 28), ~58 problems solved. Gap: W06-W09 (Backtracking, Graphs, Adv Graphs+Greedy, 1-D DP) — trackers existed, zero problems solved, discovered in the 2026-07-28 audit. Restarting from Backtracking, nothing skipped. System Design: Concepts — half read. Problems — URL Shortener only (Alex Xu book). Applications: 0 sent (deferred per plan). Vault: full rebuild into 5 life-area folders + Interview Prep flattened + Content folder unified (this month's admin work, not study work — noted so the time spent is visible).
New this month (the actual plan)
| Week | Dates | DSA | SD |
|---|---|---|---|
| 06 RESTART | Jul 29 – Aug 4 | Backtracking (9) | Finish Concepts + start Twitter Feed |
| 07 | Aug 5 – 11 | Graphs (13) | Twitter Feed |
| 08 | Aug 12 – 18 | Adv Graphs + Greedy (14) | |
| 09 | Aug 19 – 25 | 1-D DP (12) | Google Docs |
| 10 (tail) | Aug 26 – 31 | 2-D DP (11, spills into Sep 1) | YouTube |
August DSA target: 48 problems (Backtracking+Graphs+AdvGraphs/Greedy+1-D DP, plus 2-D DP starts). Pace needed to hold this: ~11-12/week, matching what you actually did in W01-W05 (15, 13, 13, 6+3bonus, 8 — average ~11.5) — the pace isn't the problem, four weeks of not opening the tracker was.
August SD target: finish Concepts, complete 3 more problems (Twitter Feed, WhatsApp, Google Docs) on top of URL Shortener → 4/10 problems done by end of month.
Weekly checklists (detail lives here, this file stays a summary)
- [[Interview Prep/Weekly Tracker/Week 06 RESTART (Jul 29–Aug 4) — Backtracking]]
- Week 07 — Graphs (create when W06 closes out)
- Week 08 — Adv Graphs + Greedy (create when W07 closes out)
- Week 09 — 1-D DP (create when W08 closes out)
- Week 10 — 2-D DP (create when W09 closes out)
Rule: don't create next week's tracker until this week's retro is actually done. Pre-building all of them in advance is exactly what made it easy to ignore them last time.
Pace tracking (fill weekly)
| Week | Planned | Actual | Running total | On pace for 48? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 06 RESTART | 9 | |||
| 07 | 13 | |||
| 08 | 14 | |||
| 09 | 12 | |||
| 10 (partial) | — |
End-of-month retro (fill Aug 31)
- DSA solved this month: __ / 48 target
- SD problems done: __ / 4 target (cumulative __ / 10)
- What slipped and why:
- September plan adjustment needed? Y/N: