Adrift in the Endless Scroll – Till a Small Practice Renewed My Passion for Books

When I was a youngster, I consumed books until my vision grew hazy. Once my exams came around, I exercised the endurance of a monk, revising for hours without a break. But in lately, I’ve watched that ability for intense focus dissolve into endless scrolling on my device. My attention span now shrinks like a slug at the tap of a thumb. Engaging with books 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 regain that cognitive flexibility, to stop the mental decline.

Therefore, about a year ago, I made a small vow: every time I encountered a term I didn’t know – whether in a novel, an piece, or an overheard discussion – I would look it up and record it. Nothing elaborate, no leather-bound journal or fountain pen. Just a ongoing record kept, amusingly, on my phone. Each seven days, I’d spend a few moments reading the collection back in an attempt to lodge the vocabulary into my recall.

The list now spans almost 20 pages, and this tiny habit has been quietly life-changing. The benefit is less about showing off with obscure adjectives – which, to be honest, can make you appear insufferable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the practice. Each time I search for and note a word, I feel a faint stretch, as though some neglected part of my mind is stirring again. Even if I never deploy “eidolon” in conversation, the very process of spotting, documenting and reviewing it interrupts the slide into inactive, superficial focus.

There is also a journalling element to it – it functions 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 routine to maintain. It is often extremely impractical. If I’m engaged on the subway, I have to pause mid-paragraph, take out my device and enter “millennialism” into my Google doc while trying not to bump the stranger pressed against me. It can reduce my pace to a frustrating speed. (The Kindle, with its built-in lexicon, is much easier). And then there’s the reviewing (which I often neglect to do), dutifully scrolling through my expanding vocabulary collection like I’m studying for a word test.

Realistically, I integrate maybe five percent of these words into my daily conversation. “Incorrigible” made the cut. “Lugubrious” as well. But the majority of them stay like exhibits – appreciated and listed but seldom used.

Nevertheless, it’s made my thinking much keener. I find myself turning less frequently for the same tired selection of descriptors, and more often for something precise and muscular. Rarely are more satisfying than unearthing the exact word you were seeking – like locating the missing component that locks the image into position.

At a time when our devices drain our focus with relentless effectiveness, it feels rebellious to use my own as a instrument for deliberate thought. And it has given me back something I worried I’d lost – the joy of exercising a intellect that, after a long time of lazy scrolling, is at last waking up again.