My ability to concentrate diminished as I spent more time on my phone. So I started to log and learn every new word I came across, and felt my brain begin to flex
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s a child I devoured books until my eyes blurred. When my GCSEs came around, I exercised the stamina of a monk, revising for hours without pause. But in recent years, I’ve watched that capacity for intense concentration dissolve into infinite scrolling on my phone. My attention span now contracts like a slug at the touch of a finger. Reading for pleasure feels less like nourishment and more like endurance training. And for someone who writes for a living, this is a professional hazard as well as something that made me sad. I wanted to restore that mental elasticity, to halt the brain rot.
So, about a year ago, I made a small vow: every time I came across a word I didn’t know – whether in a novel, an article, or an overheard conversation – I would look it up and write it down. Nothing elaborate, no leather-bound journal or fountain pen. Just a running list kept, ironically, on my phone. Each week, I’d spend a few minutes reading the list back in an attempt to lodge the word into my memory.
The list now spans almost 20 pages, and this tiny ritual has been quietly transformative. The payoff is less about peacocking with obscure adjectives – which, let’s face it, can make you sound insufferable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the ritual. Each time I look up and record a word, I feel a faint stretch, as though some neglected part of my brain is flexing again. Even if I never deploy “eidolon” in conversation, the very act of noticing, logging and revising it interrupts the slide into passive, semi-skimmed attention.
