When I was a youngster, I devoured books until my vision blurred. When my exams arrived, I demonstrated the stamina of a monk, revising for lengthy periods without a break. But in lately, I’ve observed that capacity for intense concentration dissolve into endless scrolling on my device. My attention span now shrinks like a snail at the touch of a finger. Reading for pleasure feels less like sustenance and more like endurance training. And for someone who creates content for a profession, this is a professional hazard as well as something that left me disheartened. I wanted to restore that cognitive flexibility, to halt the mental decline.
So, about a twelve months back, I made a small vow: every time I came across a word I didn’t understand – whether in a novel, an piece, or an casual discussion – I would research it and record it. Nothing elaborate, no elegant notebook or stylish pen. Just a running list kept, amusingly, on my phone. Each seven days, I’d devote a few moments reading the collection back in an effort to imprint the word into my memory.
The list now spans almost 20 pages, and this tiny habit has been quietly life-changing. The payoff is less about peacocking with obscure adjectives – which, let’s face it, can make you appear unbearable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the practice. Each time I look up and note a term, I feel a faint expansion, as though some underused part of my brain is stirring again. Even if I never use “eidolon” in conversation, the very process of noticing, documenting and revising it breaks the drift into passive, semi-skimmed focus.
Additionally, there's a journalling aspect to it – it functions as something of a diary, a record of where I’ve been engaging, what I’ve been pondering and who I’ve been hearing.
Not that it’s an simple routine to maintain. It is frequently extremely impractical. If I’m reading on the subway, I have to pause mid-paragraph, pull out my phone and enter “millenarianism” into my digital document while trying not to bump the stranger squeezed against me. It can slow my pace to a frustrating crawl. (The e-reader, with its integrated lexicon, is much easier). And then there’s the revising (which I often forget to do), conscientiously scrolling through my growing word-hoard like I’m studying for a vocabulary test.
Realistically, I integrate maybe 5% of these terms into my everyday conversation. “unreformable” made the cut. “mournful” too. But most of them stay like museum pieces – admired and listed but seldom handled.
Still, it’s rendered my mind much sharper. I notice I'm turning less frequently for the same overused selection of adjectives, and more often for something exact and muscular. Rarely are more satisfying than unearthing the exact term you were seeking – like finding the lost component that locks the picture into position.
In an era when our gadgets siphon off our focus with relentless efficiency, it feels rebellious to use my own as a instrument for deliberate thinking. And it has restored to me something I worried I’d lost – the joy of engaging a mind that, after a long time of slack browsing, is finally stirring again.
