🔗 Share this article

As a child, I devoured novels until my vision grew hazy. When my exams came around, I demonstrated the stamina of a ascetic, studying for lengthy periods without pause. But in recent years, I’ve observed that ability for deep focus fade into infinite browsing on my phone. My focus now shrinks like a slug at the touch of a finger. Reading for pleasure seems less like nourishment and more like endurance training. And for a person who writes for a living, this is a occupational risk as well as something that made me sad. I wanted to restore that cognitive flexibility, to stop the brain rot.

So, about a twelve months back, I made a small vow: every time I came across a term I didn’t know – whether in a novel, an article, or an overheard discussion – I would research it and write it down. Not a thing elaborate, no elegant notebook or stylish pen. Just a running list kept, ironically, on my phone. Each week, I’d spend a few moments reading the list back in an attempt to lodge the vocabulary into my recall.

The list now covers almost twenty sheets, and this small habit has been subtly transformative. The payoff is less about showing off with uncommon descriptors – which, to be honest, can make you appear unbearable – and more about the cognitive exercise of the practice. Each time I look up and record a word, I feel a slight stretch, as though some underused part of my brain is flexing again. Even if I never use “eidolon” in dialogue, the very act of noticing, documenting and revising it breaks the slide into inactive, semi-skimmed focus.

There is also a journalling element to it – it acts 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 impractical. If I’m reading on the subway, I have to pause mid-paragraph, take out my phone and enter “millennialism” into my digital document while trying not to elbow the stranger squeezed against me. It can slow my reading to a maddening crawl. (The e-reader, with its integrated dictionary, is much easier). And then there’s the revising (which I frequently forget to do), conscientiously scrolling through my expanding vocabulary collection like I’m studying for a vocabulary test.

Realistically, I incorporate maybe 5% of these words into my everyday speech. “Incorrigible” made the cut. “Lugubrious” as well. But most of them stay like exhibits – admired and listed but rarely handled.

Nevertheless, it’s rendered my mind much keener. I notice I'm reaching less often for the same tired selection of adjectives, and more often for something precise and strong. Rarely are more satisfying than discovering the perfect term you were seeking – like locating the missing puzzle piece that locks the image into place.

At a time when our gadgets drain our focus with relentless effectiveness, it feels rebellious to use mine as a tool for deliberate thinking. And it has restored to me something I feared I’d forfeited – the joy of engaging a mind that, after a long time of lazy scrolling, is at last waking up again.