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When I was a child, I devoured books until my vision grew hazy. Once my exams arrived, I exercised the endurance of a ascetic, revising for hours without pause. But in recent years, I’ve watched that capacity for deep concentration dissolve into infinite scrolling on my phone. My attention span now contracts like a slug at the touch of a thumb. Engaging with books for enjoyment feels less like nourishment 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 aimed to restore that cognitive flexibility, to stop the mental decline.

Therefore, about a twelve months back, I made a small vow: every time I came across a word I didn’t know – whether in a novel, an article, or an casual discussion – I would research it and write it down. Nothing elaborate, no elegant notebook or fountain pen. Just a ongoing record maintained, amusingly, on my smartphone. Each week, I’d spend a few moments reading the collection back in an attempt to lodge the word into my recall.

The record now spans almost 20 pages, and this tiny ritual has been quietly transformative. The benefit is less about showing off with uncommon adjectives – which, let’s face it, can make you sound unbearable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the ritual. Each time I look up and note a word, I feel a faint expansion, as though some underused part of my brain is stirring again. Even if I never use “phantom” in conversation, the very act of spotting, documenting and reviewing it interrupts the drift into passive, superficial attention.

Additionally, there's a diary-keeping aspect to it – it acts as something of a journal, a record of where I’ve been engaging, what I’ve been pondering and who I’ve been hearing.

Not that it’s an simple habit to maintain. It is often extremely impractical. If I’m engaged on the tube, I have to stop in the middle, pull out my phone and type “millennialism” into my Google doc while trying not to elbow the person pressed against me. It can slow my pace to a maddening crawl. (The Kindle, with its integrated lexicon, is much kinder). And then there’s the reviewing (which I frequently neglect to do), conscientiously scrolling through my growing word-hoard like I’m preparing for a word test.

In practice, I incorporate perhaps five percent of these words into my daily conversation. “Incorrigible” was adopted. “Lugubrious” as well. But most of them stay like exhibits – admired and catalogued but seldom used.

Still, it’s rendered my mind much keener. I find myself reaching less frequently for the same overused selection of descriptors, and more frequently for something exact and strong. Rarely are more gratifying than discovering the perfect word you were seeking – like finding the lost component that snaps the picture into place.

At a time when our gadgets siphon off our focus with relentless effectiveness, it feels rebellious to use mine as a tool for deliberate thinking. And it has restored to me something I worried I’d lost – the pleasure of exercising a mind that, after a long time of slack browsing, is finally waking up again.