How to conceptualize sorting problems?

I’ve been doing USACO for about a month and I just passed bronze. I just started working on silver sorting problems, and I’ve been having trouble understanding how to find elements in the list within the time constraints.

One example is USACO (Out of sorts). The solution is pretty simple, but I can’t understand how to search the list quickly. Any suggestions?

The zero-one principle is helpful for problems like these