Adrift in the Infinite Scroll – Until a Small Ritual Renewed My Love for Books

As a child, I devoured novels until my eyes blurred. Once my exams came around, I exercised the stamina of a monk, revising for lengthy periods without pause. But in lately, I’ve observed that ability for deep concentration dissolve into endless browsing on my phone. My focus now shrinks like a snail at the touch of a thumb. Engaging with books for enjoyment seems less like sustenance and more like endurance training. And for a person who writes for a living, this is a occupational risk as well as something that left me disheartened. I wanted to restore that mental elasticity, to halt the brain rot.

So, about a twelve months back, I made a small vow: every time I came across a word I didn’t know – whether in a novel, an article, or an casual conversation – I would look it up and record it. Nothing fancy, no elegant notebook or stylish pen. Just a ongoing record maintained, ironically, on my phone. Each week, I’d spend a few minutes reading the collection back in an effort to imprint the word into my recall.

The list now covers almost 20 pages, and this small habit has been quietly life-changing. The benefit is less about showing off with obscure adjectives – which, to be honest, can make you appear insufferable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the practice. Each time I search for and note a term, I feel a slight expansion, as though some underused part of my mind is flexing again. Even if I never use “phantom” in dialogue, the very process of noticing, logging and reviewing it breaks the drift into passive, semi-skimmed focus.

Additionally, there's a journalling aspect to it – it acts as something of a diary, a log of where I’ve been engaging, what I’ve been pondering and who I’ve been hearing.

It's not as if it’s an simple routine to maintain. It is frequently very inconvenient. If I’m engaged on the tube, I have to pause mid-paragraph, pull out my phone and enter “millennialism” into my Google doc while trying not to bump the person pressed against me. It can slow my reading to a maddening crawl. (The e-reader, with its integrated dictionary, is much kinder). And then there’s the revising (which I frequently forget to do), dutifully scrolling through my growing vocabulary collection like I’m studying for a vocabulary test.

In practice, I integrate perhaps five percent of these words into my daily conversation. “Incorrigible” made the cut. “mournful” too. But most of them stay like museum pieces – appreciated and listed but rarely used.

Still, it’s made my mind much keener. I notice I'm turning less often for the same overused selection of descriptors, and more often for something exact and muscular. Few things are more gratifying than unearthing the perfect word you were seeking – like locating the lost puzzle piece that snaps the image into position.

In an era when our devices siphon off our focus with relentless efficiency, it feels rebellious to use mine as a instrument for slow thought. And it has given me back something I feared I’d forfeited – the pleasure of exercising a intellect that, after years of slack browsing, is at last waking up again.