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When I was a youngster, I consumed books until my eyes grew hazy. When my exams came around, I demonstrated the endurance of a monk, studying for lengthy periods without pause. But in recent years, I’ve observed that ability for intense concentration dissolve into endless browsing on my device. My focus now contracts like a slug at the touch of a finger. Engaging with books for enjoyment feels less like nourishment and more like a marathon. And for a person who writes for a living, this is a occupational risk as well as something that left me disheartened. I aimed to restore that cognitive flexibility, to halt the brain rot.

So, about a year ago, I made a modest promise: every time I came across a term I didn’t know – whether in a book, an article, or an overheard discussion – I would research it and write it down. Not a thing elaborate, no elegant notebook or fountain pen. Just a ongoing record kept, amusingly, on my smartphone. Each week, I’d devote a few minutes reviewing the list back in an attempt to lodge the vocabulary into my recall.

The list now covers almost twenty sheets, and this tiny habit has been quietly life-changing. The payoff is less about peacocking with uncommon adjectives – which, to be honest, can make you sound insufferable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the practice. Each time I look up and note a term, I feel a slight expansion, as though some underused part of my mind is stirring again. Even if I never deploy “phantom” in dialogue, the very act of spotting, logging and revising it interrupts the drift into passive, semi-skimmed focus.

There is also a diary-keeping aspect to it – it functions as something of a diary, a log of where I’ve been engaging, what I’ve been pondering and who I’ve been hearing.

It's not as if it’s an easy routine to maintain. It is frequently extremely impractical. If I’m engaged on the subway, I have to pause mid-paragraph, pull out my device and type “millenarianism” into my digital document while trying not to bump the person pressed against me. It can reduce my pace to a frustrating crawl. (The Kindle, with its integrated dictionary, is much easier). And then there’s the reviewing (which I often forget to do), dutifully browsing through my expanding vocabulary collection like I’m studying for a vocabulary test.

In practice, I incorporate maybe five percent of these words into my daily conversation. “Incorrigible” made the cut. “Lugubrious” as well. But the majority of them remain like exhibits – appreciated and listed but rarely handled.

Nevertheless, it’s rendered my mind much sharper. I find myself reaching less frequently for the same tired handful of adjectives, and more frequently for something precise and strong. Few things are more satisfying than discovering the perfect word you were searching for – like finding the lost component that snaps the picture into position.

At a time when our gadgets drain our focus with relentless efficiency, it feels rebellious to use mine as a tool for slow thinking. And it has restored to me something I worried I’d forfeited – the pleasure of exercising a mind that, after years of slack scrolling, is finally waking up again.