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As a child, I devoured novels until my eyes blurred. Once my GCSEs came around, I exercised the endurance of a monk, revising for hours without a break. But in lately, I’ve watched that capacity for deep focus dissolve into infinite browsing on my device. My attention span now contracts like a slug at the tap of a thumb. Reading for pleasure seems less like sustenance and more like a marathon. And for a person who writes for a profession, this is a professional hazard as well as something that made me sad. I aimed to restore that cognitive flexibility, to stop the brain rot.

So, about a year ago, I made a modest vow: every time I encountered a word I didn’t know – whether in a book, an article, or an overheard conversation – I would look it up and record it. Nothing fancy, no elegant notebook or fountain pen. Just a running list kept, amusingly, on my smartphone. Each seven days, I’d spend a few moments reading the list back in an effort to imprint the vocabulary into my memory.

The list now spans almost twenty sheets, and this small habit has been quietly life-changing. The benefit is less about peacocking with obscure adjectives – 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 note a term, I feel a faint expansion, as though some underused part of my mind is flexing again. Even if I never use “eidolon” in dialogue, the very process of spotting, documenting and revising it breaks the drift into inactive, semi-skimmed focus.

Additionally, there's a journalling element to it – it functions as something of a diary, a record of where I’ve been engaging, what I’ve been pondering and who I’ve been listening to.

Not that it’s an simple routine to maintain. It is frequently very impractical. If I’m engaged on the subway, I have to pause mid-paragraph, pull out my device and type “millennialism” into my digital document while trying not to bump the person squeezed against me. It can reduce my pace to a maddening crawl. (The Kindle, with its integrated dictionary, is much easier). And then there’s the revising (which I frequently neglect to do), dutifully scrolling through my expanding word-hoard like I’m preparing for a word test.

Realistically, I incorporate maybe 5% of these terms into my daily conversation. “Incorrigible” made the cut. “Lugubrious” as well. But the majority of them stay like museum pieces – appreciated and listed but rarely used.

Nevertheless, it’s rendered my thinking much sharper. I find myself reaching less frequently for the same overused selection of adjectives, and more often for something exact and strong. Few things are more satisfying than discovering the exact word you were seeking – like finding the missing component that locks the image into position.

At a time when our devices drain our attention with relentless efficiency, it feels subversive to use mine as a instrument for deliberate thinking. And it has restored to me something I worried I’d lost – the joy of exercising a intellect that, after a long time of slack scrolling, is finally stirring again.