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As a child, I consumed books until my eyes blurred. Once my exams came around, I demonstrated the stamina of a ascetic, studying for lengthy periods without a break. But in recent years, I’ve watched that capacity for deep concentration dissolve into endless scrolling on my phone. My attention span now shrinks like a slug at the touch of a thumb. Engaging with books for pleasure seems less like sustenance and more like a marathon. And for someone who creates content for a profession, this is a occupational risk as well as something that left me disheartened. I wanted to restore that mental elasticity, to stop the mental decline.

Therefore, about a year ago, I made a modest promise: every time I encountered a word I didn’t understand – whether in a novel, an article, or an casual discussion – I would look it up and record it. Not a thing elaborate, no elegant notebook or fountain pen. Just a running list maintained, amusingly, on my phone. Each seven days, I’d spend a few moments reading the list back in an effort to imprint the vocabulary into my memory.

The record now covers almost 20 pages, and this small ritual has been quietly life-changing. The benefit 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 practice. Each time I look up and note a term, I feel a slight stretch, as though some underused part of my brain is stirring again. Even if I never use “phantom” in conversation, the very act of noticing, documenting and reviewing it breaks the slide into inactive, superficial attention.

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

Not that it’s an simple routine to maintain. It is often extremely impractical. If I’m engaged on the tube, I have to stop mid-paragraph, take out my device and enter “millenarianism” into my Google doc while trying not to elbow the stranger pressed against me. It can reduce my pace to a frustrating crawl. (The e-reader, with its built-in lexicon, is much easier). And then there’s the revising (which I often forget to do), conscientiously browsing through my growing word-hoard like I’m studying for a word test.

In practice, I integrate maybe 5% of these terms into my daily speech. “unreformable” was adopted. “mournful” as well. But the majority of them stay like exhibits – appreciated and listed but seldom used.

Nevertheless, it’s made my thinking much keener. I notice I'm reaching less often for the same overused handful of descriptors, and more often for something precise and muscular. Rarely are more satisfying than discovering the perfect word you were searching for – like locating the missing puzzle piece that locks the image into position.

At a time when our gadgets siphon off our focus with merciless effectiveness, it feels subversive to use mine as a instrument for deliberate thinking. And it has restored to me something I worried I’d forfeited – the pleasure of engaging a mind that, after years of lazy scrolling, is finally waking up again.