🔗 Share this article

When I was a youngster, I devoured novels until my eyes grew hazy. When my exams arrived, I exercised the stamina of a monk, revising for lengthy periods without a break. But in recent years, I’ve watched that ability for deep concentration fade into endless browsing on my device. My attention span now shrinks like a snail at the tap of a finger. Engaging with books for enjoyment feels less like nourishment and more like a marathon. 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 restore that cognitive flexibility, to stop the brain rot.

Therefore, about a year ago, I made a small vow: every time I encountered a word I didn’t know – whether in a book, an piece, or an casual conversation – I would research it and record it. Not a thing fancy, no leather-bound journal or fountain pen. Just a ongoing record maintained, ironically, on my smartphone. Each week, I’d spend a few minutes reading the collection back in an effort to lodge the vocabulary into my recall.

The record now covers almost 20 pages, and this tiny habit has been subtly transformative. The payoff is less about peacocking with uncommon adjectives – which, to be honest, can make you sound insufferable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the ritual. Each time I search for and record a term, I feel a faint expansion, as though some neglected part of my mind is flexing again. Even if I never use “eidolon” in dialogue, the very act of noticing, logging and revising it interrupts the slide into inactive, superficial attention.

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

It's not as if it’s an simple routine to keep up. It is often very inconvenient. If I’m engaged on the subway, I have to pause mid-paragraph, pull out my device and type “millennialism” into my Google doc while trying not to elbow the person squeezed against me. It can slow my pace to a maddening crawl. (The e-reader, with its built-in dictionary, is much easier). And then there’s the reviewing (which I often forget to do), conscientiously browsing through my expanding word-hoard like I’m studying for a word test.

In practice, I integrate maybe five percent of these words into my daily speech. “Incorrigible” was adopted. “Lugubrious” too. But the majority of them stay like museum pieces – admired and listed but rarely used.

Still, it’s made my thinking much sharper. I notice I'm reaching less often for the same overused selection of adjectives, and more frequently for something precise and muscular. Rarely are more gratifying than unearthing the exact term you were seeking – like finding the lost component that locks the image into position.

At a time when our devices drain our focus with merciless efficiency, it feels subversive to use mine as a instrument for slow thinking. And it has restored to me something I feared I’d lost – the joy of exercising a intellect that, after years of slack browsing, is at last stirring again.