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As a youngster, I devoured novels until my vision blurred. Once my GCSEs came around, I demonstrated the stamina of a monk, studying for hours without pause. But in recent years, I’ve watched that ability for intense focus fade into infinite browsing on my phone. My focus now shrinks like a slug at the touch of a thumb. Reading for enjoyment feels less like sustenance and more like a marathon. 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 mental elasticity, to stop the brain rot.

So, about a twelve months back, I made a small promise: every time I came across a term I didn’t understand – whether in a book, an piece, or an casual discussion – I would look it up and write it down. Nothing fancy, no elegant notebook or stylish pen. Just a ongoing record maintained, ironically, on my phone. Each week, I’d devote a few minutes reviewing the collection back in an attempt to imprint the word into my recall.

The list now spans almost 20 pages, and this tiny ritual has been quietly life-changing. The benefit is less about showing off with obscure adjectives – which, let’s face it, can make you appear unbearable – and more about the cognitive exercise of the practice. Each time I search for and note a word, I feel a slight expansion, as though some neglected part of my brain is flexing again. Even if I never deploy “eidolon” in dialogue, the very act of noticing, documenting and reviewing it interrupts the drift into passive, superficial attention.

There is also a diary-keeping aspect to it – it acts as something of a journal, a record of where I’ve been engaging, what I’ve been thinking about and who I’ve been hearing.

It's not as if it’s an simple habit to keep up. It is frequently extremely inconvenient. If I’m reading on the subway, I have to pause mid-paragraph, pull out my device and type “millennialism” into my digital document while trying not to elbow the stranger pressed against me. It can reduce my reading to a frustrating speed. (The e-reader, with its built-in lexicon, is much easier). And then there’s the reviewing (which I often forget to do), dutifully scrolling through my expanding vocabulary collection like I’m studying for a vocabulary test.

In practice, I incorporate perhaps 5% of these words into my daily speech. “Incorrigible” made the cut. “mournful” too. But the majority of them remain like exhibits – appreciated and catalogued but rarely used.

Still, it’s rendered my mind much sharper. I find myself reaching less often for the same tired handful of descriptors, and more frequently for something precise and muscular. Rarely are more satisfying than discovering the perfect word you were seeking – like locating the missing component that snaps the picture into position.

At a time when our gadgets siphon off our attention with merciless efficiency, it feels subversive to use mine as a tool for deliberate thought. And it has restored to me something I worried I’d forfeited – the joy of exercising a mind that, after years of slack scrolling, is at last stirring again.