Overcoming Bad Habits in Your Speech and Debate Career

In today's fast-paced world, many people fall into the trap of cramming as much learning as possible into a single day. I've been guilty of this myself — even going as far as spending six hours on a weekend trying to improve a skill, like speech and debate, by watching tutorial after tutorial. This habit extends beyond speech and debate, but it's especially common in this community, where people dedicate countless hours to training in hopes of becoming national-level debaters. However, this approach is not only ineffective; it can also be harmful in the long run. Studies have shown that overloading your brain can lead to two major issues: burnout and memory loss.

Spending excessive hours studying a single subject causes mental fatigue, which negatively impacts your ability to learn. In the past, research revealed that burnout decreases motivation and performance while also harming self-esteem and mental health in the process. The worst part? Burnout can gradually erode your passion for the activity you're working so hard to excel in. Ironically, the more you cram, the less effective your learning becomes. It's a vicious cycle that ultimately leaves you forgetting much of what you've worked so hard to retain.

Cramming for hours on end makes it difficult for the brain to retain information. Studies have highlighted the crucial role of sleep, particularly the REM phase, in consolidating knowledge and improving long-term memory. When you overwhelm yourself with information, much of it becomes lost because your brain simply doesn't have the bandwidth — or the rest — it needs to process it effectively, causing the knowledge you worked so hard to gain to be lost.

One method that I’ve been using for the past couple of weeks, which has shown significant progress, is pacing myself. This means that instead of spending six hours a day watching tutorials on things like becoming better at debate, you split that into your entire week and watch around fifty minutes a day. This method helps improve memory retention by allowing your brain more time to process the information, making learning more effective.

Fifty minutes a day is effective, but studying without breaks can reduce focus and attention span. However, a popular method has been brought up in the past to improve your retention even further. It is called the pomodoro method. In essence, you study or learn for twenty-five minutes and then you take a break for five minutes and go do something fun that you enjoy. This allows your brain time to recharge and be at maximum attention levels.

Another equally harmful habit is copying other debaters and trying to be exactly like them. I believe the negative effects of certain habits are often overlooked and should be discussed more, especially in the speech and debate community. Whether you are new or advanced, this issue can still affect you. It can be as small as repeating the same words. For example, I haven’t gone a round where I haven’t heard things like “Principally pass because…” or “Let me pick up the ball where… dropped it.” These phrases are overused, and the danger of using them is that you don’t build uniqueness to stand out in a round full of people at your same experience level.

The most harmful mistake is copying other debaters, attempting to mimic their style instead of developing your own. You aren’t the person you are trying to imitate, and oftentimes people copy them when their style of delivery doesn’t match who they are trying to copy, leading to a complete mess. Instead, people should take inspiration from a variety of debaters — but only as inspiration, nothing more. Having a unique speaking style helps you stand out, which is one of the most important factors in a debate round. That is what separates good people from great debaters. For example, Tyler Luu, in his winning speech, doesn’t sound like anyone else in the chamber, and that plays a big part in why he won.

There are numerous habits that can stumble in someone's career in speech and debate, but the two that stood out to me were learning too much at once and copying other people. Overloading yourself with too much learning at once hinders your ability to retain information, and copying other people robs your ability to stand out in a round, which is the deciding factor in who gets first and last. Most importantly — just BE YOURSELF!