Lost in the Infinite Scroll – Until a Simple Ritual Renewed My Love for Books

When I was a child, I consumed books until my eyes blurred. Once my GCSEs arrived, I exercised the stamina of a monk, revising for lengthy periods without pause. But in lately, I’ve observed that ability for intense concentration dissolve into infinite scrolling on my device. My attention span now shrinks like a snail at the touch of a thumb. Engaging with books for pleasure seems less like nourishment and more like endurance training. And for a person who creates content for a profession, this is a professional hazard as well as something that made me sad. I wanted to regain that mental elasticity, to stop the brain rot.

So, about a twelve months back, I made a modest vow: every time I encountered a word I didn’t know – whether in a book, an piece, or an overheard conversation – I would look it up and record it. Not a thing fancy, no leather-bound journal or stylish pen. Just a ongoing record maintained, amusingly, on my phone. Each seven days, I’d spend a few moments reading the list back in an attempt to lodge the word into my recall.

The list now covers almost twenty sheets, and this small ritual has been subtly transformative. The benefit is less about showing off with uncommon adjectives – which, to be honest, can make you sound insufferable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the ritual. Each time I look up and record a term, I feel a faint expansion, as though some neglected part of my mind is flexing again. Even if I never use “phantom” in dialogue, the very process of noticing, documenting and reviewing it interrupts the drift into inactive, superficial attention.

Additionally, there's a diary-keeping element to it – it functions as something of a journal, a log of where I’ve been reading, what I’ve been pondering and who I’ve been listening to.

It's not as if it’s an easy routine to keep up. It is often extremely impractical. If I’m engaged on the subway, I have to pause mid-paragraph, take out my phone and type “millenarianism” into my digital document while trying not to elbow the stranger pressed against me. It can reduce my pace to a frustrating crawl. (The e-reader, with its built-in lexicon, is much easier). And then there’s the revising (which I frequently neglect to do), conscientiously scrolling through my growing word-hoard like I’m preparing for a word test.

Realistically, I incorporate maybe 5% of these terms into my everyday conversation. “unreformable” was adopted. “mournful” too. But the majority of them stay like exhibits – appreciated and catalogued but seldom used.

Nevertheless, it’s made my mind much keener. I find myself turning less often for the same tired selection of adjectives, and more frequently for something exact and muscular. Rarely are more gratifying than unearthing the exact word you were seeking – like finding the lost puzzle piece that locks the picture into position.

At a time when our gadgets siphon off our focus with relentless efficiency, it feels rebellious to use mine as a tool for slow thinking. And it has restored to me something I feared I’d lost – the joy of engaging a intellect that, after a long time of lazy browsing, is at last stirring again.