🔗 Share this article

As a youngster, I consumed novels until my eyes grew hazy. When my GCSEs arrived, I demonstrated the endurance of a ascetic, studying for lengthy periods without a break. But in recent years, I’ve observed that ability for intense concentration fade into infinite scrolling on my device. My attention span now contracts like a snail at the tap of a thumb. Engaging with books for pleasure seems less like nourishment and more like a marathon. And for someone who creates content for a living, this is a professional hazard as well as something that left me disheartened. I aimed to restore that cognitive flexibility, to halt the brain rot.

So, about a year ago, I made a modest promise: every time I came across a word I didn’t understand – whether in a book, an piece, or an overheard discussion – I would research it and write it down. Not a thing elaborate, no elegant notebook or fountain pen. Just a running list kept, ironically, on my smartphone. Each week, I’d spend a few minutes reading the list back in an effort to lodge the word into my recall.

The record now spans almost 20 pages, and this small ritual has been subtly transformative. The benefit is less about showing off with obscure descriptors – which, let’s face it, can make you appear insufferable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the ritual. Each time I look up and record a term, I feel a faint stretch, as though some neglected part of my mind is flexing again. Even if I never use “eidolon” in dialogue, the very process of spotting, documenting and revising it interrupts the slide into inactive, semi-skimmed focus.

There is also a journalling aspect to it – it functions as something of a journal, a record of where I’ve been reading, what I’ve been pondering and who I’ve been listening to.

Not that it’s an simple routine to keep up. It is frequently very inconvenient. If I’m engaged on the tube, I have to pause in the middle, take out my phone and type “millenarianism” into my Google doc while trying not to elbow the stranger squeezed against me. It can reduce my pace to a frustrating speed. (The e-reader, with its built-in dictionary, is much easier). 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 word test.

In practice, I incorporate perhaps five percent of these terms into my daily speech. “Incorrigible” made the cut. “mournful” too. But most of them stay like exhibits – admired and listed but seldom used.

Still, it’s made my thinking much keener. I notice I'm turning less often for the same overused selection of adjectives, and more frequently for something precise and strong. Rarely are more satisfying than discovering the perfect word you were searching for – like locating the missing puzzle piece that locks the picture into position.

At a time when our devices drain our focus with relentless effectiveness, it feels subversive to use mine as a tool for deliberate thinking. And it has restored to me something I feared I’d lost – the joy of engaging a intellect that, after a long time of lazy browsing, is finally stirring again.