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When I was a youngster, I consumed novels until my vision grew hazy. When my GCSEs arrived, I demonstrated the endurance of a monk, studying for hours without a break. But in lately, I’ve observed that ability for deep focus fade into infinite browsing on my phone. My focus now contracts like a snail at the tap of a thumb. Engaging with books for pleasure seems less like sustenance and more like a marathon. And for a person who writes for a living, this is a professional hazard as well as something that made me sad. I wanted to restore that mental elasticity, to stop the mental decline.

So, about a year ago, I made a modest promise: every time I came across a term I didn’t know – whether in a book, an piece, or an overheard conversation – I would look it up and record it. Not a thing elaborate, no elegant notebook or stylish pen. Just a ongoing record kept, ironically, on my smartphone. Each seven days, I’d devote a few moments reviewing the list back in an attempt to lodge the vocabulary into my recall.

The list now covers almost 20 pages, and this small ritual has been subtly life-changing. The payoff is less about showing off with obscure descriptors – which, to be honest, can make you sound insufferable – and more about the cognitive exercise of the ritual. Each time I look up and record a word, I feel a faint expansion, as though some underused part of my mind is flexing again. Even if I never use “eidolon” in dialogue, the very act of noticing, logging and reviewing it breaks the drift into inactive, semi-skimmed attention.

Additionally, there's a journalling aspect to it – it acts as something of a journal, a log 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 easy routine to maintain. It is frequently extremely inconvenient. If I’m engaged on the subway, I have to pause in the middle, pull out my phone 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 crawl. (The Kindle, with its integrated lexicon, is much easier). And then there’s the reviewing (which I frequently forget to do), dutifully scrolling through my growing vocabulary collection like I’m preparing for a vocabulary test.

Realistically, I incorporate maybe five percent of these words into my daily conversation. “unreformable” was adopted. “mournful” as well. But most of them remain like museum pieces – appreciated and catalogued but rarely handled.

Nevertheless, it’s rendered my mind much keener. I notice I'm reaching less often for the same overused selection of descriptors, and more frequently for something exact and strong. Rarely are more satisfying than unearthing the perfect term you were searching for – like finding the missing puzzle piece that locks the picture into position.

At a time when our devices drain our attention with merciless efficiency, it feels rebellious to use my own as a tool for slow thought. And it has given me back something I feared I’d forfeited – the joy of engaging a intellect that, after years of slack scrolling, is finally stirring again.