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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 a break. But in lately, I’ve watched that ability for deep concentration dissolve into infinite scrolling on my device. My attention span now contracts like a snail at the tap of a thumb. Engaging with books for enjoyment seems less like sustenance 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 aimed to regain that cognitive flexibility, to stop the mental decline.

So, about a year ago, I made a small promise: every time I came across a word I didn’t understand – whether in a novel, an article, or an casual conversation – I would look it up and record it. Not a thing elaborate, no elegant notebook or stylish pen. Just a ongoing record kept, amusingly, on my phone. Each week, I’d spend a few minutes reviewing the list back in an attempt to imprint the word into my recall.

The record now spans almost 20 pages, and this tiny ritual has been quietly transformative. The payoff is less about peacocking with obscure adjectives – which, to be honest, can make you appear unbearable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the practice. Each time I look up and record a word, I feel a faint stretch, as though some neglected part of my mind is stirring again. Even if I never use “phantom” in conversation, the very act of noticing, logging and reviewing it breaks the slide into passive, semi-skimmed attention.

There is also a journalling element to it – it acts as something of a diary, a record of where I’ve been engaging, what I’ve been thinking about and who I’ve been hearing.

Not that it’s an simple habit to maintain. It is frequently extremely impractical. If I’m engaged on the subway, I have to stop in the middle, pull out my device and type “millenarianism” into my digital document while trying not to elbow the person squeezed against me. It can slow my pace to a maddening crawl. (The e-reader, with its built-in dictionary, is much easier). And then there’s the revising (which I often neglect to do), conscientiously scrolling through my expanding vocabulary collection like I’m studying for a vocabulary test.

In practice, I incorporate perhaps five percent of these words into my daily speech. “unreformable” made the cut. “mournful” too. But the majority of them stay like museum pieces – appreciated and listed but seldom handled.

Nevertheless, it’s made my mind much keener. I notice I'm turning less often for the same tired handful of descriptors, and more frequently for something exact and strong. Rarely are more satisfying than discovering the exact word you were seeking – like finding the missing component that locks the image into place.

At a time when our gadgets drain our focus with merciless efficiency, it feels rebellious to use my own as a tool for slow thinking. And it has restored to me something I feared I’d lost – the joy of engaging a mind that, after years of slack browsing, is finally waking up again.