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When I was a child, I devoured novels until my eyes blurred. When my GCSEs arrived, I exercised the stamina of a monk, revising for hours without pause. But in lately, I’ve watched that ability for intense focus fade into endless browsing on my phone. My attention span now shrinks like a snail at the touch of a finger. Engaging with books for pleasure feels less like sustenance and more like a marathon. And for someone who creates content for a living, this is a occupational risk as well as something that left me disheartened. I aimed to regain that cognitive flexibility, to halt the mental decline.

Therefore, about a year ago, I made a modest promise: every time I encountered a word I didn’t know – whether in a novel, an article, or an overheard discussion – I would research it and record it. Not a thing fancy, no leather-bound journal or stylish pen. Just a running list maintained, ironically, on my smartphone. Each week, I’d spend a few moments reading the collection back in an effort to imprint the vocabulary into my recall.

The list now covers almost 20 pages, and this tiny ritual has been quietly life-changing. The payoff is less about showing off with uncommon descriptors – which, to be honest, can make you appear insufferable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the ritual. Each time I search for and record a term, I feel a faint expansion, as though some underused part of my mind is stirring again. Even if I never deploy “eidolon” in dialogue, the very process of spotting, logging and reviewing it breaks the slide into inactive, superficial attention.

Additionally, there's a journalling element to it – it acts as something of a journal, a record of where I’ve been engaging, what I’ve been thinking about and who I’ve been listening to.

It's not as if it’s an simple habit to maintain. It is often very impractical. If I’m reading on the subway, I have to pause mid-paragraph, pull out my phone and enter “millenarianism” into my digital document while trying not to bump the stranger squeezed against me. It can slow my pace to a maddening crawl. (The Kindle, with its built-in lexicon, is much easier). And then there’s the reviewing (which I frequently neglect to do), conscientiously scrolling through my growing vocabulary collection like I’m studying for a vocabulary test.

In practice, I incorporate maybe five percent of these terms into my daily conversation. “unreformable” was adopted. “mournful” too. But the majority of them remain like exhibits – admired and listed but rarely handled.

Still, it’s made my thinking much sharper. I notice I'm reaching less frequently for the same overused selection of descriptors, and more frequently for something precise and strong. Few things are more gratifying than unearthing the exact word you were seeking – like locating the missing puzzle piece that snaps the image into place.

At a time when our devices drain our focus with merciless efficiency, it feels subversive to use mine as a tool for deliberate thinking. And it has given me back something I worried I’d forfeited – the pleasure of engaging a mind that, after years of lazy scrolling, is at last waking up again.