- Have all the boilerplate code almost memorized. By that I mean things like parsing a simple file, opening a display, etc..
- Know the relevant techniques, and train. For example, if you are doing a coding competition, dynamic programming algorithms are a classic. If pretty pictures are your goal, fractals and raytracing are a good start. Neither is likely to be of much use for you in the real world.
What coding challenges don't require is the ability to think long term. That code is likely to be thrown away after the challenge is completed. Managing complexity is maybe the most important part of real world programming, and for technical reasons you have very little of it in coding challenges.
As for Bisqwit's videos, they are awesome, and he certainly is very talented. I actually learned a lot from him. However, all his videos are about toy projects, not building complex applications. BTW, I think this is the reason he is a bus driver. He doesn't enjoy coding in a professional setting, because it is a different kind of work.