Staying Current Between Tournaments
Extemp topics shift weekly, so a file that is even a month old can be dangerously stale. You will be able to build a sustainable weekly reading and filing routine that keeps your file current all season.
The Weekly Filing Habit
Set aside a consistent block of time each week — many competitors use thirty to sixty minutes several nights a week — to read new articles, extract evidence, and file them, retiring outdated articles to a back section or discarding them if a topic has genuinely moved on. A file that is updated in small, regular doses beats a frantic all-night session the week before a tournament.
Tracking Breaking News
Following a small number of reliable news aggregators or setting alerts for major recurring topics — an upcoming Federal Reserve meeting, an election, a peace negotiation — ensures a competitor is never caught off guard by a major story that broke the day before a tournament. When a major story breaks, competitors often do an emergency file update the night before competing to make sure their most recent folder reflects it.
Anticipating Recurring Calendar Events
Because certain events recur predictably — Federal Reserve meetings roughly every six weeks, State of the Union addresses, major election dates, scheduled international summits — advanced competitors pre-build partial files in the weeks leading up to these known dates, so that when the event occurs, only a final update is needed rather than starting from zero.
A tournament is five days away and a surprise interest rate decision was just announced.
The competitor spends forty-five minutes that evening reading three fresh articles on the surprise decision, extracting the key statistic (a half-point cut instead of the expected quarter-point) and two expert reactions, and files them at the very front of her 'Fed Policy' folder so they are the first thing she sees if she draws a related question at the tournament.
1. What is the recommended approach to keeping a file current?
2. True or False?
"If a major story breaks the night before a tournament, it is not worth updating a file that late."
Answer all 2 to check.
A sustainable weekly reading and filing habit, backed by attention to breaking news, keeps a file useful all season instead of stale by tournament time.