Another post on what to do on the topic at this point in the season
What kind of debate you do and what circuit you debate on will impact this a lot.
For the purpose of the discussion below, I'm assuming the following:
You aren't reading an identity argument on both sides every debate
You are willing to read a mixture of K, policy, and procedural arguments
You debate in an area with both judging that will vote on and competitors who will run a diverse mix of arguments
If this isn't your circuit or style, your mileage will vary.
I am also peppering in some advice for teams at the absolute top levels of the national circuit. If that doesn't apply to you, my advice should still be solid, but take it with a grain of salt because I'm assuming lots of debate meta stuff that really doesn't matter for 95% of high school debaters.
Ok with all those caveats...
First, as other folks rightly pointed out, you don't have to focus on the topic at all, yet, if you don't want to.
Stuff you can and should work on outside of the topic:
Theory blocks - have all of the major args (including, and especially aspec) prepped out with extreme detail (e.g., through to the 1AR and in some cases, the 2NR).
Non-topical affs - You will have debates against teams that aren't topical. Develop your defense of topicality such that you could read it as a 1-off position, and go for it for the entire block. Develop some other generic positions, cede the political DA, cap/feminism/queer theory K, and so on, and block those out as well. If you are aiming for TOC elims, remember that the difficulty level in these debates will range from "cakewalk" to "toughest debate of the tournament" - so you need to come prepared for an absolute throw-down and should prioritize your work accordingly. This is the opposite of core topic affs, where you can usually rely on out-teching most teams running it, so don't need to expend a ton of research time past the 1st tournament.
Impact backfiles - I think this mostly falls into two categories. There are the ridiculous arguments you have to be ready for, like climate change good, spark, nihlism. You should also have a complete impact backfile for, well, all the common impacts, and answers to those impacts, and answers to those answers. The nice thing about this is you really shouldn't have to do original research for any of this - ask around and use Open Ev and you'll be able to compile pretty much everything you need.
I disagree with some of the other replies (which are good advice, so please don't disregard them) in that I think you 100% should do topic research at this point in the season.
First, you want to read about the topic as much as you can.
Learn in the way that is best for you, whether that means checking out a community college class on water management or a free online class, or just reading some books (you will cut some cool T cards while doing that).
For instance: https://www.coursera.org/learn/water?ranMID=40328&ranEAID=SAyYsTvLiGQ&ranSiteID=SAyYsTvLiGQ-UOtAT7VWOIra8j0XxNsz3Q&siteID=SAyYsTvLiGQ-UOtAT7VWOIra8j0XxNsz3Q&utm_content=10&utm_medium=partners&utm_source=linkshare&utm_campaign=SAyYsTvLiGQ
Your goals with this research:
Cut amazing T cards that the camps will 100% miss
Develop an understanding of the topic you can blindside somebody with. Seriously, you'll find that when you've read about the topic, and the other team hasn't, you'll sometimes formulate a 1-word PIC because of something really stupid the aff did in writing their plan text.
Get some leads on topic positions that the camps will probably miss. You'll know these when you see them; imagine you are reading a section of a textbook on water purification systems that the author offhand goes "of course, the normal means of implementation is for municipalities to purchase these purification systems from these 3 Chinese companies, and much has been said about the risks inherent in that, for instance, DA, DA, CP/internal net benefit. [10 footnotes referencing studies on this question]." Not saying you'll run into something quite that good, but you'll absolutely run into things that lead you down rabbit holes, and eventually one of them will pay off.