Adrift in the Infinite Scroll – Until a Simple Ritual Restored My Passion for Reading

When I was a child, I devoured books until my vision blurred. When my exams arrived, I exercised the endurance of a ascetic, revising for lengthy periods without a break. But in lately, I’ve watched that capacity for deep concentration dissolve into endless scrolling on my phone. My attention span now shrinks like a slug at the tap of a thumb. Reading for enjoyment feels less like nourishment and more like endurance training. And for a person who writes for a living, this is a professional hazard as well as something that left me disheartened. I wanted to restore that mental elasticity, to halt the brain rot.

So, about a year ago, I made a small vow: every time I encountered a term I didn’t understand – whether in a novel, an article, or an casual discussion – I would research it and write it down. Not a thing fancy, no elegant notebook or stylish pen. Just a ongoing record kept, amusingly, on my smartphone. Each week, I’d spend a few minutes reviewing the collection back in an attempt to imprint the word into my memory.

The record now covers almost 20 pages, and this small ritual has been subtly life-changing. The benefit is less about peacocking with obscure descriptors – which, to be honest, can make you appear unbearable – and more about the cognitive exercise of the practice. Each time I look up and note a term, I feel a faint stretch, as though some underused part of my mind is stirring again. Even if I never use “eidolon” in conversation, the very process of noticing, logging and revising it interrupts the slide into passive, superficial focus.

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

It's not as if it’s an simple routine to keep up. It is often very impractical. If I’m reading on the tube, I have to stop in the middle, take out my device and enter “millennialism” into my Google doc while trying not to elbow the stranger squeezed 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 revising (which I frequently forget to do), dutifully scrolling 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 conversation. “unreformable” made the cut. “mournful” too. But most of them remain like museum pieces – appreciated and listed but rarely handled.

Still, it’s rendered my thinking much sharper. I find myself turning less often for the same overused selection of descriptors, and more frequently for something exact and strong. Rarely are more gratifying than discovering the perfect term you were seeking – like locating the lost component that locks the picture into position.

In an era when our gadgets siphon off our attention with merciless efficiency, it feels rebellious to use my own as a instrument for deliberate thinking. And it has restored to me something I worried I’d forfeited – the joy of engaging a mind that, after years of lazy scrolling, is finally stirring again.