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

When I was a youngster, I devoured books until my eyes grew hazy. When my GCSEs arrived, I demonstrated the endurance of a ascetic, revising for hours without a break. But in recent years, I’ve watched that capacity for deep focus dissolve into infinite scrolling on my phone. My focus now contracts like a slug at the tap of a finger. Engaging with books for pleasure seems less like nourishment and more like endurance training. And for someone who creates content for a profession, this is a occupational risk as well as something that left me disheartened. I wanted to restore that cognitive flexibility, to halt 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 article, or an casual discussion – I would research it and record it. Nothing fancy, no leather-bound journal or fountain pen. Just a ongoing record kept, ironically, on my smartphone. Each week, I’d devote a few moments reviewing the list back in an attempt to lodge the word into my memory.

The list now covers almost twenty sheets, and this small habit has been quietly life-changing. The benefit is less about peacocking with uncommon adjectives – which, to be honest, can make you sound unbearable – and more about the cognitive exercise of the ritual. Each time I search for and record a word, I feel a faint stretch, as though some neglected part of my mind is flexing again. Even if I never use “eidolon” in conversation, the very act of spotting, documenting and reviewing it interrupts the slide into passive, semi-skimmed attention.

Additionally, there's a journalling element to it – it functions 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.

It's not as if it’s an easy habit to keep up. It is often extremely impractical. If I’m reading on the tube, I have to stop mid-paragraph, take out my phone and type “millennialism” into my digital document while trying not to bump the person squeezed against me. It can slow my pace to a frustrating speed. (The Kindle, with its built-in lexicon, is much kinder). And then there’s the reviewing (which I often neglect to do), conscientiously browsing through my expanding vocabulary collection like I’m preparing for a word test.

Realistically, I incorporate maybe five percent of these words into my everyday speech. “unreformable” was adopted. “Lugubrious” too. But most of them stay like exhibits – admired and listed but seldom used.

Nevertheless, it’s made my mind much keener. I find myself turning less frequently for the same tired handful of descriptors, and more often for something precise and strong. Few things are more satisfying than unearthing the perfect term you were searching for – like locating the missing component that locks the picture into position.

In an era when our devices siphon off our focus with relentless effectiveness, it feels subversive to use my own as a tool for slow thought. And it has restored to me something I worried I’d lost – the pleasure of exercising a mind that, after years of slack scrolling, is finally waking up again.