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As a child, I consumed books until my eyes grew hazy. When my exams came around, I exercised the endurance of a ascetic, studying for hours without a break. But in recent years, I’ve observed that ability for intense focus fade into infinite browsing on my device. My attention span now shrinks like a slug at the tap of a finger. Engaging with books for pleasure feels less like nourishment and more like endurance training. And for a person who writes for a profession, this is a professional hazard as well as something that made me sad. I aimed to regain that cognitive flexibility, to stop the mental decline.

Therefore, about a year ago, I made a small vow: every time I encountered a word I didn’t know – whether in a book, an piece, or an casual conversation – I would look it up and record it. Not a thing elaborate, no elegant notebook or stylish pen. Just a running list kept, amusingly, on my smartphone. Each seven days, I’d devote a few moments reading the list back in an effort to imprint the word into my recall.

The list now spans almost twenty sheets, and this small ritual has been subtly transformative. The benefit is less about peacocking with uncommon adjectives – which, to be honest, can make you sound unbearable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the ritual. Each time I look up and note a term, I feel a faint expansion, as though some neglected part of my brain is stirring again. Even if I never deploy “eidolon” in conversation, the very act of spotting, documenting and reviewing it breaks the drift into inactive, semi-skimmed attention.

There is also a journalling aspect to it – it functions as something of a journal, a record of where I’ve been engaging, what I’ve been pondering and who I’ve been hearing.

It's not as if it’s an simple habit to keep up. It is frequently very impractical. If I’m reading on the tube, I have to stop mid-paragraph, pull out my phone and type “millennialism” into my digital document while trying not to elbow the stranger squeezed against me. It can slow my pace to a maddening crawl. (The e-reader, with its built-in lexicon, is much easier). And then there’s the reviewing (which I often forget to do), dutifully browsing through my growing word-hoard like I’m studying for a word test.

In practice, I integrate perhaps 5% of these terms into my everyday speech. “unreformable” made the cut. “Lugubrious” too. But the majority of them remain like museum pieces – admired and listed but seldom used.

Still, it’s rendered my thinking much keener. I find myself turning less frequently for the same tired handful of adjectives, and more frequently for something exact and muscular. Rarely are more satisfying than discovering the perfect word you were seeking – like locating the missing puzzle piece that locks the picture into position.

At a time when our gadgets drain our focus with merciless effectiveness, it feels subversive to use mine as a instrument for slow thought. 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.