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As a child, I devoured books until my eyes grew hazy. Once my GCSEs came around, I demonstrated the endurance of a ascetic, revising for hours 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 touch of a finger. Reading for pleasure seems less like sustenance and more like a marathon. And for someone who creates content for a living, this is a professional hazard as well as something that made me sad. I aimed to restore that mental elasticity, to stop the mental decline.

Therefore, about a year ago, I made a small promise: every time I came across a term I didn’t know – whether in a novel, an article, or an overheard discussion – I would look it up and record it. Not a thing elaborate, no elegant notebook or fountain pen. Just a running list kept, ironically, on my phone. Each week, I’d devote a few minutes reading the list back in an attempt to lodge the word into my recall.

The list now covers almost 20 pages, and this small habit has been quietly transformative. The payoff is less about peacocking with uncommon adjectives – which, to be honest, can make you appear unbearable – and more about the cognitive exercise of the practice. Each time I search for and record a term, I feel a slight expansion, as though some neglected part of my mind is stirring again. Even if I never deploy “eidolon” in dialogue, the very process of noticing, documenting and revising it breaks the slide into passive, superficial attention.

Additionally, there's a journalling element to it – it functions as something of a diary, a record of where I’ve been engaging, what I’ve been pondering and who I’ve been listening to.

Not that it’s an easy routine to maintain. It is often very impractical. If I’m reading on the tube, I have to stop in the middle, take out my device and enter “millenarianism” into my Google doc while trying not to elbow the person squeezed against me. It can slow my reading to a frustrating speed. (The Kindle, with its built-in dictionary, is much easier). And then there’s the reviewing (which I frequently forget to do), conscientiously browsing through my growing vocabulary collection like I’m studying for a vocabulary test.

Realistically, I incorporate perhaps five percent of these words into my daily conversation. “Incorrigible” was adopted. “Lugubrious” too. But the majority of them stay like museum pieces – admired and catalogued but rarely handled.

Still, it’s rendered my mind much keener. I find myself reaching less frequently for the same overused handful of descriptors, and more often for something precise and strong. Few things are more satisfying than unearthing the perfect term you were seeking – like locating the missing puzzle piece that snaps the picture into place.

At a time when our gadgets siphon off our focus with relentless effectiveness, it feels rebellious to use my own as a tool for slow thought. And it has restored to me something I feared I’d forfeited – the joy of engaging a intellect that, after a long time of slack scrolling, is finally waking up again.