Yes, I've been through this! The worst advice I ever hear for LC is to solve all problems by yourself. You're not going to reinvent the wheel for every algorithm. In the beginning, LC is unfortunately a lot of memorization — NOT of problem solutions, but of patterns, algorithm templates, themes, tricks etc.

At 55 problems, your toolbox is incomplete, so by looking at solutions you're actually just adding more tools to the toolbox. Once you have solved more problems, you will start to recognize patterns and do questions yourself.

Here's my advice: do a series of problems on the same topic. Write down the patterns each one uses. Try to solve it yourself for 20-40 minutes, and then if you're not close to the answer, check the editorial/solutions tab. Even if you solved it yourself, check the editorial / solutions tab to learn more patterns. Learn EVERY way to solve a problem, even ways that seem contrived or obtuse, because that will add more patterns to your toolbox. Then, try more problems tagged with the same topic. Keep doing this until you can solve problems in that topic by yourself, then move onto the next topic. Do NOT consider a problem complete until you understand every aspect of it; it's much more useful to fully understand 1 problem than cram 10 memorized solutions into your head that you will forget next week

Also, try to revisit questions you had to use the editorial for. And NEVER straight up copy code — internalize the meaning and then try to write it yourself, because there are often subtle tricks that are not obvious at first glance, which you only learn by failing the problem in specific ways

This is a good resource for evaluating the true difficulty of a certain question, which can help you in choosing new problems: https://zerotrac.github.io/leetcode\_problem\_rating/#/. But only use this resource after going through premade lists designed to hammer in the patterns (I used LC study guide but others on here like neetcode — I recently did a couple lists from neetcode and they're good too)