Adrift in the Infinite Scroll – Till a Simple Practice Restored My Love for Reading

As a child, I devoured books until my eyes grew hazy. Once my exams came around, I demonstrated the endurance of a ascetic, studying for hours without pause. But in lately, I’ve observed that ability for intense focus dissolve into endless scrolling on my phone. My focus now shrinks like a snail at the tap of a finger. Engaging with books for enjoyment seems less like nourishment and more like endurance training. And for someone who writes for a living, this is a occupational risk 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 modest promise: every time I came across a term I didn’t understand – whether in a book, an article, or an casual discussion – I would research it and write it down. Nothing fancy, no leather-bound journal or fountain pen. Just a running list kept, amusingly, on my smartphone. Each week, I’d devote a few minutes reviewing the list back in an attempt to imprint the vocabulary into my recall.

The list now spans almost 20 pages, and this small ritual has been quietly transformative. The payoff is less about peacocking with obscure descriptors – which, let’s face it, can make you appear insufferable – and more about the cognitive exercise of the ritual. Each time I search for and note a word, I feel a slight stretch, as though some neglected part of my brain is flexing again. Even if I never use “eidolon” in conversation, the very process of spotting, logging and reviewing it breaks the drift into inactive, superficial attention.

Additionally, there's a journalling aspect to it – it functions as something of a journal, a log of where I’ve been engaging, what I’ve been thinking about and who I’ve been hearing.

It's not as if it’s an easy routine to keep up. It is frequently extremely impractical. If I’m reading on the subway, I have to stop in the middle, take out my device and type “millennialism” into my digital document while trying not to elbow the person squeezed against me. It can slow my reading to a frustrating speed. (The e-reader, with its built-in dictionary, is much easier). And then there’s the revising (which I frequently forget to do), dutifully scrolling through my growing word-hoard like I’m studying for a word test.

Realistically, I incorporate perhaps five percent of these words into my daily conversation. “Incorrigible” made the cut. “mournful” as well. But the majority of them stay like museum pieces – admired and catalogued but rarely used.

Still, it’s made my mind much keener. I find myself turning less frequently for the same tired handful of adjectives, and more often for something precise and muscular. Few things are more satisfying than discovering the perfect word you were searching for – like locating the missing component that snaps the picture into place.

At a time when our gadgets drain our attention with merciless efficiency, it feels subversive to use my own as a instrument for slow thought. And it has given me back something I worried I’d forfeited – the pleasure of engaging a mind that, after a long time of slack scrolling, is at last waking up again.