A: The Problem
In most cases, having a routine for tournaments is a good thing. Knowing what you’re going to wear, how you’re going to use your time pre-round, how long it’ll take you to prepare your breakfast, etc. are all helpful tools to eliminate decision-making fatigue and conserve your energy for speaking.
For many extempers, though, routine quickly evolves (or, perhaps more accurately, devolves) into obsession often without them realizing it. Soon, preparing for a round isn’t about doing what you need to feel your best in the moment, but about meticulously following an arbitrary plan. This can be devastating competitively.
Say you never snack on tournament days, you just have big meals, and over time you’ve developed a superstition where you avoid snacking during competition altogether. If you have a small breakfast one day and are hungry before a round, but forgo a snack out of superstition, that can cost you energy and, ultimately, the round.
Similarly, an impediment to faithfully executing tournament superstitions can lead to full-blown panic. Losing your lucky earrings can feel synonymous with losing the entire tournament.
Even still, obsessive tournament superstitions can make it nearly impossible to compete. Let’s say you refuse to wear the suit that you once dropped prelims in, for fear of it happening again. Soon that thought pattern evolves into not doing your hair the way you did the time you had too many fluency stumbles, never wearing the shoes you had on in that one outround when your jokes didn’t land, and suddenly…you’ve exhausted all the shoe, suit, and hair possibilities for competing. Extemp becomes one never-ending battle with formulas for the “right” fate.
B1: The Cause
Debilitating tournament superstitions stem from conflationary, absolutist thinking. There’s nothing wrong with thinking, I like wearing these socks whenever I compete; they help me get in the zone. A problem only emerges when your thought process goes from that to my skills as an extemper are completely linked to my purple socks; without them I will have no idea what I’m doing in round and probably drop prelims and get rejected from college and never get a job and spend the rest of my life in my parents’ basement.
In other words: totally irrational and, I’m guessing, if you’re the kind of person who spends your free time reading the Extemper’s Bible, at least somewhat relatable.
B2: The Solution
The solution to such thinking is relatively simple and just involves a healthy dose of metacognition. According to Maureen Salamon of Harvard Medical School, one of the most effective ways of dealing with automatic negative thoughts (thoughts like, I can never wear this suit again because I’ll forget all my sources) is to examine the evidence for and against the claim you’ve created mentally. I’d wager that, without fail, you can’t prove–at least not with a coherent link chain–that it’s your hair ties and not your analysis that’s winning you rounds.
Often, the best way to analyze this evidence is to take the challenging but worthwhile step of actively contradicting your tournament superstitions. Wearing a suit that you thought was cursed, for example, can help you reclaim it and realize that what makes the difference in rounds is you and your speaking. Everything else is accessory.
For more helpful techniques, I recommend this article of Salamon’s.
C: The Impact
Learning to let go of counterproductive tournament superstitions can be liberating. The impact of reframing your thinking and challenging your superstitions is a shockingly larger well of mental energy to spend on everything from substructure to analysis of the Argentinian economy. More to the point, without the anxieties of superstition weighing you down, tournaments can become less dominated by stress and more defined by excitement.
So, go forth and challenge your tournament superstitions. And no, I won’t wish you good luck. I You don’t need it.