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As a child, I devoured books until my vision blurred. Once my GCSEs arrived, I exercised the stamina of a ascetic, studying for lengthy periods without a break. But in lately, I’ve watched that capacity for deep focus fade into infinite browsing on my phone. My attention span now shrinks 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 a person who writes for a profession, this is a occupational risk as well as something that made me sad. 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 came across a term I didn’t know – whether in a novel, an article, or an casual conversation – I would research it and write it down. Not a thing elaborate, no leather-bound journal or stylish pen. Just a running list kept, ironically, on my smartphone. Each seven days, I’d devote a few minutes reviewing the collection back in an effort to lodge the word into my memory.

The list now covers almost 20 pages, and this small habit has been subtly transformative. The payoff is less about showing off with uncommon descriptors – which, let’s face it, can make you appear unbearable – and more about the cognitive exercise of the ritual. Each time I look up and record a term, I feel a faint stretch, as though some underused part of my brain is stirring again. Even if I never use “eidolon” in conversation, the very process of noticing, documenting and reviewing it interrupts the slide into inactive, superficial focus.

There is also a diary-keeping element 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.

Not that it’s an easy habit to maintain. It is frequently very inconvenient. If I’m reading on the tube, I have to stop mid-paragraph, take out my device and type “millennialism” into my digital document while trying not to elbow the person squeezed against me. It can reduce my reading to a frustrating speed. (The e-reader, with its integrated dictionary, is much easier). And then there’s the revising (which I often neglect to do), dutifully scrolling through my growing vocabulary collection like I’m studying for a word test.

Realistically, I integrate maybe five percent of these terms into my daily speech. “unreformable” was adopted. “mournful” as well. But most of them stay like exhibits – admired and catalogued but rarely used.

Nevertheless, it’s made my mind much keener. I find myself reaching less frequently for the same tired handful of adjectives, and more frequently for something precise and muscular. Rarely are more satisfying than unearthing the exact word you were searching for – like finding the missing component that locks the picture into place.

In an era when our gadgets drain our focus with merciless efficiency, it feels subversive to use my own as a tool for deliberate thinking. And it has restored to me something I worried I’d forfeited – the joy of engaging a mind that, after years of lazy scrolling, is at last waking up again.