Adrift in the Infinite Scroll – Till a Simple Practice Renewed My Passion for Books

As a youngster, I devoured novels until my vision blurred. When my exams arrived, I exercised the endurance of a ascetic, revising for lengthy periods without a break. But in lately, I’ve watched that ability for intense concentration dissolve into infinite browsing on my phone. My focus now shrinks like a snail at the tap of a thumb. Reading for pleasure seems less like sustenance and more like a marathon. And for someone who writes for a living, this is a occupational risk as well as something that made me sad. I aimed to regain that cognitive flexibility, to halt the mental decline.

Therefore, about a twelve months back, I made a small promise: every time I came across a term I didn’t understand – whether in a book, an piece, or an overheard discussion – I would look it up and write it down. Nothing fancy, no elegant notebook or fountain pen. Just a running list maintained, amusingly, on my phone. Each seven days, I’d spend a few minutes reading the list back in an effort to imprint the vocabulary into my memory.

The record now covers almost twenty sheets, and this tiny habit has been quietly life-changing. The payoff is less about peacocking with uncommon descriptors – which, to be honest, can make you appear unbearable – and more about the cognitive exercise of the practice. Each time I look up and record a word, I feel a faint expansion, as though some underused part of my mind is stirring again. Even if I never use “phantom” in dialogue, the very act of noticing, documenting and revising it interrupts the slide into passive, superficial attention.

There is also a journalling element to it – it functions as something of a journal, a log of where I’ve been reading, what I’ve been thinking about and who I’ve been hearing.

Not that it’s an simple habit to maintain. It is frequently very inconvenient. If I’m engaged on the tube, I have to stop in the middle, take out my phone and type “millennialism” into my digital document while trying not to elbow the person squeezed against me. It can reduce my reading to a frustrating speed. (The Kindle, with its integrated dictionary, is much easier). And then there’s the reviewing (which I often neglect to do), conscientiously scrolling through my growing vocabulary collection like I’m preparing for a word test.

In practice, I integrate maybe 5% of these terms into my everyday conversation. “unreformable” was adopted. “mournful” too. But the majority of them remain like exhibits – appreciated and catalogued but rarely used.

Nevertheless, it’s rendered my thinking much keener. I find myself turning less frequently for the same tired handful of adjectives, and more frequently for something exact and muscular. Rarely are more satisfying 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 gadgets drain our attention with relentless efficiency, it feels rebellious to use my own as a tool for slow thinking. And it has restored to me something I feared I’d forfeited – the pleasure of exercising a intellect that, after years of lazy browsing, is finally stirring again.