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As a child, I devoured novels until my eyes grew hazy. Once my exams arrived, I demonstrated the stamina of a monk, revising for lengthy periods without pause. But in lately, I’ve observed that ability for intense concentration fade into endless scrolling on my device. My focus now contracts like a snail at the tap of a finger. Reading for pleasure seems less like nourishment and more like endurance training. And for a person who creates content for a profession, this is a occupational risk as well as something that made me sad. I aimed to regain that cognitive flexibility, to halt the mental decline.

So, about a year ago, I made a small vow: every time I encountered a word I didn’t know – whether in a novel, an article, or an overheard conversation – I would research it and write it down. Nothing elaborate, no leather-bound journal or stylish pen. Just a running list maintained, amusingly, on my phone. Each week, I’d spend a few minutes reviewing the collection back in an effort to lodge the word into my memory.

The list now spans almost 20 pages, and this tiny ritual has been quietly life-changing. The payoff is less about showing off with uncommon descriptors – which, let’s face it, can make you appear unbearable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the ritual. Each time I search for and record a word, I feel a slight expansion, as though some neglected part of my brain is flexing again. Even if I never deploy “phantom” in dialogue, the very process of noticing, logging and reviewing it breaks the drift into inactive, superficial attention.

Additionally, there's a journalling element to it – it acts as something of a diary, a record of where I’ve been reading, what I’ve been thinking about and who I’ve been hearing.

It's not as if it’s an simple habit to maintain. It is often very inconvenient. If I’m reading on the tube, I have to stop in the middle, pull out my device and enter “millenarianism” into my Google doc while trying not to bump the stranger pressed against me. It can reduce my reading to a maddening speed. (The e-reader, with its integrated lexicon, is much kinder). And then there’s the reviewing (which I often neglect to do), conscientiously browsing through my expanding vocabulary collection like I’m studying for a word test.

In practice, I incorporate perhaps five percent of these terms into my daily conversation. “unreformable” made the cut. “Lugubrious” as well. But most of them stay like museum pieces – appreciated and catalogued but rarely handled.

Nevertheless, it’s rendered my mind much keener. I notice I'm turning less often for the same overused selection of descriptors, and more often for something exact and muscular. Rarely are more satisfying than unearthing the perfect term you were seeking – like locating the lost puzzle piece that locks the picture into place.

At a time when our gadgets siphon off our focus with merciless effectiveness, it feels subversive to use my own as a tool for slow thinking. And it has given me back something I feared I’d lost – the pleasure of engaging a mind that, after years of slack browsing, is finally stirring again.