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As a youngster, I consumed books until my eyes blurred. Once my exams came around, I demonstrated the endurance of a monk, studying for hours without pause. But in lately, I’ve watched that capacity for intense focus fade into infinite scrolling on my device. My attention span now shrinks like a snail at the touch of a finger. Engaging with books for pleasure seems less like nourishment and more like endurance training. And for a person who writes for a profession, this is a occupational risk as well as something that left me disheartened. I wanted to regain that mental elasticity, to stop the mental decline.

Therefore, about a twelve months back, I made a modest promise: every time I encountered a word I didn’t understand – whether in a novel, an article, or an overheard discussion – I would look it up and record it. Nothing elaborate, no elegant notebook or stylish pen. Just a running list kept, ironically, on my smartphone. Each week, I’d spend a few minutes reviewing the list back in an effort to lodge the word into my memory.

The record now spans almost 20 pages, and this tiny habit has been subtly transformative. The benefit is less about showing off with obscure adjectives – which, to be honest, can make you sound insufferable – and more about the cognitive exercise of the ritual. Each time I look up and note a term, I feel a slight expansion, as though some neglected part of my mind is flexing again. Even if I never use “phantom” in conversation, the very process of spotting, documenting and reviewing it breaks the slide into passive, semi-skimmed focus.

There is also a journalling element to it – it functions as something of a diary, a log of where I’ve been reading, what I’ve been pondering and who I’ve been hearing.

It's not as if it’s an simple habit to keep up. It is frequently very inconvenient. If I’m engaged on the tube, I have to stop in the middle, pull out my phone and type “millenarianism” into my digital document while trying not to elbow the person pressed against me. It can slow my pace to a maddening crawl. (The Kindle, with its built-in dictionary, is much kinder). And then there’s the revising (which I frequently neglect to do), dutifully browsing through my expanding vocabulary collection like I’m preparing for a word test.

Realistically, I incorporate maybe five percent of these terms into my everyday speech. “unreformable” was adopted. “Lugubrious” as well. But most of them remain like exhibits – admired and catalogued but seldom used.

Still, it’s made my mind much sharper. I notice I'm turning less often for the same tired handful of descriptors, and more often for something exact and muscular. Few things are more gratifying than unearthing the perfect term you were seeking – like finding the missing component that snaps the image into place.

At a time when our devices drain our focus with relentless effectiveness, it feels subversive to use mine as a tool for slow thinking. And it has given me back something I feared I’d forfeited – the joy of engaging a mind that, after a long time of slack browsing, is at last stirring again.