Adrift in the Infinite Scroll – Till a Small Practice Renewed My Passion for Reading

When I was a child, I consumed novels until my vision blurred. Once my exams arrived, I exercised the endurance of a monk, studying for lengthy periods without a break. But in lately, I’ve observed that capacity for deep focus dissolve into infinite scrolling on my phone. My attention span now contracts like a snail at the tap of a finger. Engaging with books for pleasure seems less like nourishment and more like a marathon. And for someone who creates content for a living, this is a occupational risk as well as something that made me sad. I wanted to restore that mental elasticity, to halt the mental decline.

So, about a year ago, I made a small vow: every time I encountered a term I didn’t know – whether in a novel, an article, or an overheard discussion – I would look it up and record it. Not a thing elaborate, no leather-bound journal or stylish pen. Just a running list kept, amusingly, on my phone. Each week, I’d spend a few minutes reviewing the list back in an effort to imprint the vocabulary into my recall.

The record now spans almost 20 pages, and this tiny ritual has been subtly life-changing. The payoff is less about showing off with uncommon adjectives – which, let’s face it, can make you sound unbearable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the ritual. Each time I search for and note a term, I feel a faint stretch, as though some neglected part of my mind is stirring again. Even if I never use “phantom” in conversation, the very process of noticing, documenting and reviewing it breaks the slide into passive, superficial attention.

There is also a diary-keeping aspect to it – it acts as something of a journal, a log of where I’ve been engaging, what I’ve been pondering and who I’ve been listening to.

Not that it’s an easy routine to maintain. It is frequently extremely impractical. If I’m engaged on the tube, I have to stop mid-paragraph, pull out my device and enter “millenarianism” into my digital document while trying not to bump the stranger squeezed against me. It can reduce my reading to a frustrating crawl. (The e-reader, with its integrated dictionary, is much kinder). And then there’s the revising (which I often forget to do), conscientiously browsing through my expanding word-hoard like I’m preparing for a word test.

Realistically, I integrate maybe 5% of these words into my everyday speech. “Incorrigible” made the cut. “Lugubrious” as well. But the majority of them remain like exhibits – appreciated and catalogued but seldom used.

Nevertheless, it’s rendered my thinking much keener. I notice I'm reaching less often for the same tired handful of adjectives, and more often for something exact and muscular. Rarely are more gratifying than discovering the exact word you were searching for – like locating the lost puzzle piece that locks the picture into position.

In an era when our gadgets drain our attention with merciless efficiency, it feels subversive to use my own as a tool for slow thinking. And it has given me back something I feared I’d forfeited – the joy of exercising a mind that, after years of slack browsing, is finally stirring again.