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As a child, I devoured novels until my eyes grew hazy. Once my GCSEs arrived, I exercised the endurance of a monk, studying for hours without pause. But in lately, I’ve watched that capacity for intense concentration fade into infinite scrolling on my phone. My focus now contracts like a slug at the touch of a finger. Reading for pleasure feels less like sustenance and more like a marathon. And for someone who writes for a living, this is a occupational risk as well as something that left me disheartened. I aimed to regain that mental elasticity, to halt the mental decline.

Therefore, about a twelve months back, I made a small promise: every time I encountered a word I didn’t know – whether in a book, an article, or an casual conversation – I would research it and write it down. Nothing elaborate, no leather-bound journal or fountain pen. Just a running list kept, ironically, on my smartphone. Each week, I’d devote a few moments reviewing the list back in an effort to imprint the vocabulary into my recall.

The record now covers almost twenty sheets, and this tiny habit has been quietly life-changing. The benefit is less about peacocking with uncommon adjectives – which, to be honest, can make you sound unbearable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the ritual. Each time I search for and note a word, I feel a slight expansion, as though some neglected part of my mind is flexing again. Even if I never deploy “eidolon” in conversation, the very act of spotting, documenting and reviewing it interrupts the drift into passive, semi-skimmed attention.

Additionally, there's a diary-keeping element 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 often extremely inconvenient. If I’m engaged on the tube, I have to pause in the middle, pull out my phone and enter “millenarianism” into my digital document while trying not to bump the person squeezed against me. It can slow my pace to a maddening crawl. (The e-reader, with its integrated lexicon, is much easier). And then there’s the reviewing (which I often forget to do), dutifully browsing through my growing vocabulary collection like I’m studying for a word test.

In practice, I integrate perhaps five percent of these terms into my daily conversation. “unreformable” was adopted. “mournful” too. But most of them stay like museum pieces – appreciated and listed but rarely used.

Still, it’s rendered my mind much keener. I notice I'm turning less frequently for the same overused selection of adjectives, and more frequently for something precise and strong. Rarely are more gratifying than unearthing the perfect word you were searching for – like finding the lost puzzle piece that locks the image into place.

In an era when our devices siphon off our focus with relentless effectiveness, it feels subversive to use mine as a instrument for slow thinking. And it has given me back something I worried I’d forfeited – the joy of exercising a intellect that, after a long time of lazy browsing, is at last waking up again.