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When I was a youngster, I devoured books until my eyes blurred. When my GCSEs arrived, I exercised the stamina of a ascetic, studying for lengthy periods without a break. But in recent years, I’ve observed that capacity for intense concentration fade into endless browsing on my phone. My attention span now contracts like a snail at the tap of a thumb. Engaging with books for enjoyment seems less like nourishment and more like a marathon. And for someone who writes for a profession, this is a occupational risk as well as something that left me disheartened. I aimed to restore that cognitive flexibility, to halt 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 book, an article, or an casual discussion – I would look it up and write it down. Not a thing fancy, no elegant notebook or stylish pen. Just a running list kept, ironically, on my phone. Each seven days, I’d spend a few minutes reading the collection back in an effort to lodge the word into my memory.

The list now covers almost twenty sheets, and this small ritual has been quietly transformative. The payoff is less about showing off with uncommon descriptors – which, to be honest, can make you appear insufferable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the practice. Each time I search for and record a word, I feel a slight expansion, as though some neglected part of my brain is stirring again. Even if I never use “phantom” in conversation, the very process of noticing, logging and revising it interrupts the drift into passive, semi-skimmed focus.

Additionally, there's a diary-keeping element to it – it functions as something of a journal, a log of where I’ve been reading, what I’ve been thinking about and who I’ve been hearing.

It's not as if it’s an easy routine to maintain. It is frequently extremely inconvenient. If I’m reading on the subway, I have to pause mid-paragraph, pull out my phone and enter “millenarianism” into my digital document while trying not to elbow the stranger squeezed against me. It can slow my pace to a maddening speed. (The e-reader, with its integrated dictionary, is much easier). And then there’s the revising (which I often forget to do), conscientiously browsing through my expanding vocabulary collection like I’m preparing for a vocabulary test.

Realistically, I incorporate maybe five percent of these words into my everyday conversation. “unreformable” was adopted. “mournful” too. But the majority of them stay like exhibits – appreciated and catalogued but rarely used.

Nevertheless, it’s made my mind much sharper. I find myself turning less frequently for the same overused handful of descriptors, and more often for something precise and muscular. Rarely are more satisfying than unearthing the exact term you were searching for – like locating the lost component that snaps the image into position.

In an era when our devices siphon off 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 forfeited – the joy of exercising a intellect that, after years of slack browsing, is at last stirring again.