🔗 Share this article

As a child, I devoured novels until my eyes blurred. When my GCSEs came around, I demonstrated the stamina of a ascetic, studying for lengthy periods without a break. But in lately, I’ve watched that ability for deep concentration dissolve into infinite scrolling on my device. My focus now contracts like a snail at the tap of a thumb. Reading for enjoyment seems less like sustenance and more like endurance training. And for someone who creates content for a profession, this is a occupational risk as well as something that made me sad. I aimed to regain that mental elasticity, to stop the brain rot.

Therefore, about a twelve months back, I made a small vow: every time I encountered a word I didn’t know – whether in a novel, an article, or an casual discussion – I would look it up and record it. Not a thing fancy, no elegant notebook or stylish pen. Just a ongoing record maintained, ironically, on my smartphone. Each seven days, I’d spend a few minutes reviewing the list back in an effort to imprint the vocabulary into my memory.

The list now covers almost twenty sheets, and this tiny habit has been quietly life-changing. The benefit is less about showing off with uncommon descriptors – which, let’s face it, can make you appear unbearable – and more about the cognitive exercise of the ritual. Each time I look up and note a word, I feel a slight expansion, as though some underused part of my mind is flexing again. Even if I never deploy “phantom” in dialogue, the very act of noticing, documenting and revising it breaks the drift into inactive, superficial focus.

There is also a diary-keeping aspect to it – it functions as something of a journal, a record 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 often very inconvenient. If I’m engaged on the subway, I have to stop mid-paragraph, take out my device and type “millenarianism” into my Google doc while trying not to elbow the person squeezed against me. It can reduce my pace to a maddening crawl. (The Kindle, with its built-in dictionary, is much kinder). And then there’s the reviewing (which I often neglect to do), dutifully browsing through my growing vocabulary collection like I’m studying for a vocabulary test.

In practice, I incorporate perhaps five percent of these terms into my everyday conversation. “Incorrigible” was adopted. “Lugubrious” too. But the majority of them stay like exhibits – appreciated and catalogued but seldom used.

Still, it’s made my thinking much sharper. I notice I'm turning less frequently for the same overused selection of adjectives, and more often for something exact and strong. Rarely are more satisfying than unearthing the perfect word you were seeking – like finding the missing component that snaps the image into position.

In an era when our devices drain our focus with relentless effectiveness, it feels rebellious to use my own as a tool for slow thinking. And it has given me back something I worried I’d lost – the pleasure of engaging a mind that, after a long time of slack scrolling, is finally stirring again.