Adrift in the Endless Scroll – Till a Simple Ritual Restored My Love for Books

As a youngster, I devoured books until my vision blurred. Once my exams arrived, I demonstrated the endurance of a ascetic, studying for hours without a break. But in recent years, I’ve watched that ability for deep concentration fade into infinite scrolling on my device. My focus now contracts like a snail at the touch of a thumb. Reading for enjoyment feels less like nourishment and more like endurance training. And for a person who writes for a profession, this is a professional hazard as well as something that left me disheartened. I aimed to restore that cognitive flexibility, to halt the mental decline.

So, about a twelve months back, I made a small vow: every time I encountered a term I didn’t understand – whether in a novel, an article, or an overheard conversation – I would look it up and write it down. Nothing fancy, no leather-bound journal or stylish pen. Just a running list kept, ironically, on my smartphone. Each seven days, I’d spend a few minutes reviewing the collection back in an attempt to imprint the vocabulary into my recall.

The record now spans almost 20 pages, and this small ritual has been subtly life-changing. The benefit is less about showing off with uncommon descriptors – which, let’s face it, can make you appear unbearable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the ritual. Each time I search for and note a term, I feel a slight expansion, as though some underused part of my brain is flexing again. Even if I never use “phantom” in dialogue, the very process of spotting, logging and reviewing it interrupts the drift into inactive, superficial attention.

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

Not that it’s an simple habit to maintain. It is often very inconvenient. If I’m reading on the tube, I have to stop in the middle, pull out my device and enter “millenarianism” into my Google doc while trying not to bump the person pressed against me. It can reduce my pace to a maddening crawl. (The e-reader, with its built-in lexicon, is much easier). And then there’s the reviewing (which I often neglect to do), dutifully browsing through my expanding word-hoard like I’m studying for a word test.

In practice, I incorporate maybe five percent of these terms into my everyday speech. “unreformable” was adopted. “Lugubrious” as well. But most of them remain like museum pieces – admired and catalogued but rarely used.

Still, it’s made my mind much keener. I find myself reaching less frequently for the same tired selection of descriptors, and more often for something exact and strong. Few things are more gratifying than discovering the perfect term you were searching for – like locating the lost puzzle piece that locks the picture into place.

In an era when our gadgets siphon off our attention with relentless effectiveness, it feels subversive to use mine as a tool for slow thought. And it has restored to me something I feared I’d forfeited – the joy of engaging a intellect that, after a long time of slack scrolling, is finally stirring again.