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As a child, I devoured books until my eyes blurred. Once my exams arrived, I demonstrated the stamina of a monk, revising for lengthy periods without pause. But in recent years, I’ve observed that capacity for intense focus fade into infinite scrolling on my phone. My attention span now contracts like a slug at the tap of a finger. Engaging with books for pleasure seems less like sustenance and more like a marathon. And for someone who creates content for a living, this is a professional hazard as well as something that left me disheartened. I wanted to restore that cognitive flexibility, to stop the brain rot.

Therefore, about a twelve months back, I made a small promise: every time I encountered a word I didn’t know – whether in a novel, an article, or an casual conversation – I would research it and record it. Not a thing fancy, no leather-bound journal or stylish pen. Just a ongoing record kept, ironically, on my phone. Each week, I’d spend a few minutes reviewing the list back in an effort to imprint the word into my memory.

The record now covers almost twenty sheets, and this small habit has been subtly life-changing. The payoff is less about showing off with obscure descriptors – which, let’s face it, can make you sound insufferable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the practice. Each time I search for and note a term, I feel a faint stretch, as though some underused part of my mind is flexing again. Even if I never deploy “eidolon” in conversation, the very process of noticing, documenting and reviewing it breaks the drift into inactive, semi-skimmed attention.

There is also a diary-keeping aspect to it – it functions as something of a diary, a log of where I’ve been reading, what I’ve been thinking about and who I’ve been listening to.

It's not as if it’s an simple routine to maintain. It is frequently extremely impractical. If I’m engaged on the tube, I have to stop in the middle, take out my phone and type “millennialism” into my digital document while trying not to bump the stranger pressed against me. It can slow my reading to a maddening crawl. (The e-reader, with its built-in lexicon, is much easier). And then there’s the reviewing (which I frequently forget to do), conscientiously scrolling through my growing word-hoard like I’m preparing for a word test.

In practice, I integrate maybe 5% of these words into my everyday speech. “unreformable” made the cut. “Lugubrious” too. But the majority of them stay like museum pieces – admired and listed but seldom used.

Still, it’s rendered my thinking much keener. I notice I'm reaching less often for the same tired handful of adjectives, and more frequently for something exact and muscular. Rarely are more gratifying than unearthing the exact term you were searching for – like locating the missing component that locks the picture into position.

At a time when our gadgets drain our attention with merciless effectiveness, it feels subversive to use mine as a instrument for deliberate thought. And it has given me back something I feared I’d lost – the pleasure of engaging a intellect that, after a long time of lazy scrolling, is at last stirring again.