A strategy I learned from a professor is to first solve your task in words rather than code by writing notes that describe each step of your solution. Once you have sufficiently described the solution writing the code is a piece of cake. This is also beneficial because your code will already be notated. For example, in this task this is what I would start by doing:

// create a reader to read user input

// read a number and save it to variable N

// check if N is less than or equal to 0
   // if true then end code here


// create a max variable and set to lowest possible int

// create loop to read N numbers {
   // read a number, save to variable
   // if number is greater than 'max' then set that to new max
//}

// output max

In this example I have explained step by step how I would solve the task, all I need to do now is add the code, which would take a minute or so in IntelliJ. I would still need to test to ensure it works as intended, but if I needed to ask for help the notes would be there to help the person helping me to understand what my intention was.... or even if I misinterpreted the directions.