Adrift in the Infinite Scroll – Till a Small Practice Renewed My Love for Books

As a youngster, I consumed novels until my vision grew hazy. Once my exams came around, I demonstrated the stamina of a ascetic, studying for hours without pause. But in recent years, I’ve observed that capacity for intense focus dissolve into infinite browsing on my device. My focus now shrinks like a slug at the touch of a finger. Reading for pleasure seems less like nourishment and more like endurance training. And for someone who creates content for a living, this is a professional hazard as well as something that left me disheartened. I wanted to regain that cognitive flexibility, to halt the mental decline.

Therefore, about a twelve months back, I made a modest promise: every time I came across a word I didn’t know – whether in a novel, an piece, or an casual discussion – I would look it up and write it down. Nothing elaborate, no leather-bound journal or stylish pen. Just a running list maintained, amusingly, on my phone. Each week, I’d devote a few minutes reviewing the collection back in an attempt to imprint the vocabulary into my recall.

The record now covers almost 20 pages, and this tiny habit has been quietly transformative. The payoff is less about peacocking with uncommon adjectives – which, to be honest, can make you appear unbearable – and more about the cognitive exercise of the ritual. Each time I look up and note a word, I feel a slight stretch, as though some underused part of my mind is stirring again. Even if I never use “phantom” in conversation, the very process of spotting, logging and reviewing it breaks the drift into inactive, semi-skimmed focus.

There is also a diary-keeping element 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 listening to.

It's not as if it’s an easy habit to maintain. It is often very impractical. If I’m reading on the subway, I have to stop in the middle, pull out my device and type “millenarianism” into my Google doc while trying not to elbow the stranger pressed against me. It can slow my reading to a frustrating speed. (The Kindle, with its integrated dictionary, is much kinder). And then there’s the reviewing (which I often forget to do), conscientiously scrolling through my expanding vocabulary collection like I’m studying for a vocabulary test.

Realistically, I integrate perhaps 5% of these terms into my daily conversation. “unreformable” was adopted. “mournful” too. But most of them stay like exhibits – appreciated and listed but seldom handled.

Still, it’s rendered my thinking much sharper. I find myself reaching less frequently for the same tired handful of adjectives, and more frequently for something precise and muscular. Few things are more gratifying than discovering the perfect term you were searching for – like locating the missing puzzle piece that snaps the picture into place.

In an era when our devices siphon off our attention with relentless efficiency, it feels rebellious to use my own as a tool for slow thought. And it has restored to me something I worried I’d forfeited – the joy of exercising a mind that, after years of lazy browsing, is at last stirring again.