Adrift in the Infinite Scroll – Till a Small Ritual Restored My Love for Reading

As a child, I devoured novels until my vision blurred. When my GCSEs came around, I exercised the stamina of a ascetic, revising for hours without pause. But in lately, I’ve observed that ability for intense concentration fade into endless browsing on my phone. My focus now shrinks like a snail at the touch of a finger. Engaging with books for enjoyment feels less like sustenance and more like endurance training. And for a person who writes for a living, this is a occupational risk as well as something that made me sad. I aimed to regain that mental elasticity, to halt the brain rot.

So, about a year ago, I made a modest vow: every time I encountered a term I didn’t understand – whether in a book, an article, or an casual discussion – I would look it up and record it. Nothing fancy, no leather-bound journal or stylish pen. Just a ongoing record maintained, amusingly, on my phone. Each week, I’d spend a few moments reviewing the list back in an effort to imprint the word into my recall.

The list now spans almost twenty sheets, and this small habit has been quietly transformative. The payoff is less about showing off with uncommon descriptors – which, to be honest, can make you sound unbearable – and more about the cognitive exercise of the ritual. Each time I search for and note a word, I feel a slight expansion, as though some neglected part of my mind is flexing again. Even if I never use “phantom” in conversation, the very process of noticing, documenting and revising it interrupts the slide into passive, superficial attention.

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

It's not as if it’s an easy habit to maintain. It is frequently very impractical. If I’m reading on the tube, I have to stop mid-paragraph, pull out my phone and type “millenarianism” into my Google doc while trying not to elbow the stranger pressed against me. It can reduce my reading to a frustrating crawl. (The e-reader, with its built-in dictionary, is much easier). And then there’s the reviewing (which I frequently neglect to do), dutifully scrolling through my expanding vocabulary collection like I’m studying for a vocabulary test.

Realistically, I integrate perhaps five percent of these terms into my daily speech. “unreformable” made the cut. “Lugubrious” too. But the majority of them remain like exhibits – appreciated and catalogued but rarely handled.

Still, it’s made my mind much keener. I find myself turning less often for the same overused selection of adjectives, and more frequently for something precise and strong. Few things are more gratifying than unearthing the exact word you were seeking – like finding the lost puzzle piece that locks the picture into position.

In an era when our devices drain our focus with merciless efficiency, it feels rebellious to use mine as a instrument for slow thought. And it has given me back something I feared I’d lost – the joy of exercising a mind that, after a long time of lazy browsing, is at last waking up again.