🔗 Share this article

As a child, I consumed novels until my vision blurred. When my exams came around, I exercised the stamina of a monk, revising for lengthy periods without pause. But in lately, I’ve watched that capacity for deep concentration dissolve into endless browsing on my device. My attention span now shrinks like a snail at the touch of a finger. Reading for pleasure seems less like sustenance and more like a marathon. And for a person who writes for a living, this is a professional hazard as well as something that made me sad. I wanted to regain that mental elasticity, to stop the brain rot.

So, about a twelve months back, I made a small vow: every time I came across a word I didn’t know – whether in a novel, an article, or an casual conversation – I would research it and record it. Nothing elaborate, no leather-bound journal or fountain pen. Just a running list maintained, amusingly, on my smartphone. Each seven days, I’d devote a few minutes reviewing the collection back in an effort to imprint the word into my recall.

The list now covers almost 20 pages, and this small ritual has been subtly life-changing. The payoff 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 ritual. Each time I search for and note a term, I feel a slight stretch, as though some underused part of my brain is flexing again. Even if I never use “phantom” in dialogue, the very process of spotting, logging and reviewing it interrupts the slide into inactive, semi-skimmed attention.

Additionally, there's a journalling aspect to it – it acts as something of a diary, a record 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 easy routine to keep up. It is frequently extremely inconvenient. If I’m reading 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 stranger pressed against me. It can slow my pace to a maddening crawl. (The e-reader, with its integrated lexicon, is much easier). And then there’s the reviewing (which I often forget to do), dutifully browsing through my expanding vocabulary collection like I’m preparing for a vocabulary test.

Realistically, I integrate maybe 5% of these terms into my everyday speech. “unreformable” made the cut. “mournful” as well. But most of them remain like exhibits – appreciated and catalogued but seldom handled.

Nevertheless, it’s rendered my thinking much keener. I find myself turning less often for the same overused handful of descriptors, and more frequently for something exact and muscular. Few things are more gratifying than discovering the perfect word you were searching for – like finding the missing puzzle piece that snaps the image into place.

At a time when our gadgets siphon off our attention with merciless efficiency, it feels subversive to use my own as a instrument for slow thinking. And it has restored to me something I feared I’d forfeited – the pleasure of exercising a intellect that, after a long time of slack browsing, is at last stirring again.