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When I was a youngster, I consumed novels until my eyes blurred. Once my GCSEs came around, I demonstrated the stamina of a ascetic, revising for hours without pause. But in recent years, I’ve observed that capacity for deep focus dissolve into infinite browsing on my phone. My attention span now contracts like a snail at the tap of a finger. Reading for enjoyment feels less like nourishment and more like endurance training. And for someone 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 halt the brain rot.

Therefore, about a twelve months back, I made a modest promise: every time I came across a word I didn’t know – whether in a book, an piece, or an casual conversation – I would look it up and write it down. Not a thing fancy, no leather-bound journal or fountain pen. Just a running list maintained, amusingly, on my phone. Each seven days, I’d spend a few minutes reading the collection back in an attempt to imprint the vocabulary into my memory.

The record now spans almost twenty sheets, and this small ritual has been quietly life-changing. The payoff is less about peacocking with uncommon adjectives – which, let’s face it, can make you sound unbearable – and more about the cognitive exercise of the practice. Each time I look up 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 “phantom” in dialogue, the very process of noticing, logging and revising it breaks the drift into passive, semi-skimmed attention.

There is also a journalling aspect 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 hearing.

It's not as if it’s an easy habit to maintain. It is frequently very inconvenient. If I’m engaged on the tube, I have to stop in the middle, pull out my device and enter “millennialism” into my digital document while trying not to bump the stranger squeezed against me. It can slow my pace to a frustrating crawl. (The e-reader, with its integrated dictionary, is much kinder). And then there’s the revising (which I frequently forget to do), dutifully scrolling through my growing word-hoard like I’m preparing for a word test.

Realistically, I integrate maybe five percent of these words into my everyday speech. “Incorrigible” made the cut. “mournful” as well. But the majority of them remain like museum pieces – appreciated and catalogued but rarely handled.

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 exact and strong. Few things are more gratifying than discovering the exact term you were seeking – like locating the lost puzzle piece that snaps the picture into position.

At a time when our devices siphon off our attention with relentless effectiveness, it feels subversive to use my own as a tool for slow thinking. And it has given me back something I worried I’d forfeited – the pleasure of exercising a intellect that, after years of slack browsing, is finally stirring again.