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As a child, I devoured books until my vision blurred. Once my GCSEs arrived, I demonstrated the endurance of a ascetic, studying for hours without pause. But in lately, I’ve observed that ability for intense concentration dissolve into endless browsing on my phone. My focus now contracts like a snail at the tap of a finger. Reading for enjoyment feels less like nourishment and more like a marathon. And for a person who creates content for a living, this is a occupational risk as well as something that left me disheartened. I wanted to regain that mental elasticity, to halt the mental decline.

So, about a year ago, I made a modest vow: every time I encountered a word I didn’t understand – whether in a book, an article, or an casual discussion – I would look it up and record it. Nothing elaborate, no elegant notebook or stylish pen. Just a ongoing record maintained, ironically, on my phone. Each week, I’d spend a few minutes reading the collection back in an effort to imprint the word into my recall.

The record now covers almost twenty sheets, and this small habit has been quietly life-changing. The benefit is less about peacocking with obscure descriptors – which, let’s face it, can make you sound insufferable – and more about the cognitive exercise of the practice. Each time I look up and record a term, I feel a slight stretch, as though some neglected part of my brain is flexing again. Even if I never use “phantom” in dialogue, the very process of noticing, logging and revising it interrupts the slide into passive, superficial attention.

There is also 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 hearing.

Not that it’s an simple routine to keep up. It is frequently very inconvenient. If I’m reading on the tube, I have to stop mid-paragraph, pull out my device and type “millenarianism” into my digital document while trying not to bump the person squeezed against me. It can slow my reading to a frustrating speed. (The e-reader, with its integrated lexicon, is much kinder). And then there’s the revising (which I often neglect to do), conscientiously browsing through my expanding vocabulary collection like I’m preparing for a vocabulary test.

Realistically, I incorporate maybe 5% of these words into my everyday conversation. “Incorrigible” was adopted. “Lugubrious” as well. But most of them remain like museum pieces – admired and listed but rarely handled.

Nevertheless, it’s rendered my thinking much sharper. I notice I'm reaching less frequently for the same overused handful of descriptors, and more often for something precise and muscular. Rarely are more satisfying than discovering the exact term you were seeking – like locating the lost puzzle piece that snaps the image into place.

In an era when our gadgets drain our focus with merciless efficiency, it feels subversive to use mine as a tool for deliberate thinking. And it has given me back something I worried I’d lost – the pleasure of engaging a intellect that, after years of lazy scrolling, is finally stirring again.