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As a child, I devoured books until my vision grew hazy. Once my GCSEs came around, I demonstrated the stamina of a monk, revising for lengthy periods without a break. But in recent years, I’ve watched that ability for deep focus fade into endless browsing on my phone. My focus now contracts like a snail at the touch of a thumb. Engaging with books for enjoyment feels less like nourishment and more like endurance training. And for someone who writes for a profession, this is a professional hazard as well as something that made me sad. I wanted to regain that cognitive flexibility, to stop the mental decline.

So, about a year ago, I made a small vow: 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 stylish pen. Just a running list kept, ironically, on my smartphone. Each week, I’d spend a few minutes reading the collection back in an attempt to imprint the vocabulary into my memory.

The record now covers almost twenty sheets, and this tiny ritual has been subtly life-changing. The payoff is less about peacocking with uncommon descriptors – which, to be honest, can make you sound insufferable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the ritual. Each time I search for and note a term, I feel a slight stretch, as though some neglected part of my brain 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.

There is also a diary-keeping element to it – it functions as something of a journal, a record 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 keep up. It is frequently extremely inconvenient. If I’m reading on the subway, I have to stop mid-paragraph, take out my device and enter “millennialism” into my digital document while trying not to elbow the person pressed against me. It can reduce my pace to a frustrating speed. (The Kindle, with its built-in lexicon, is much easier). And then there’s the revising (which I frequently forget to do), conscientiously scrolling through my growing vocabulary collection like I’m studying for a word test.

Realistically, I incorporate maybe five percent of these words into my daily speech. “Incorrigible” made the cut. “mournful” too. But most of them stay like museum pieces – admired and catalogued but rarely handled.

Nevertheless, it’s made my mind much keener. I notice I'm turning less often for the same tired selection of adjectives, and more often for something precise and strong. Rarely are more satisfying than unearthing the exact term you were searching for – like finding the missing puzzle piece that snaps the picture into position.

At a time when our gadgets siphon off our focus with relentless 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 pleasure of exercising a mind that, after years of lazy browsing, is at last stirring again.