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As a youngster, I devoured books until my vision grew hazy. When my GCSEs came around, I demonstrated the endurance of a monk, revising for hours without pause. But in recent years, I’ve observed that ability for deep focus dissolve into infinite browsing on my device. My focus now shrinks like a slug at the touch of a finger. Engaging with books for pleasure seems less like nourishment and more like a marathon. And for a person who writes for a living, this is a occupational risk as well as something that made me sad. I aimed to restore that mental elasticity, to stop the brain rot.

Therefore, about a year ago, I made a modest promise: every time I came across a term I didn’t understand – whether in a book, an article, or an casual discussion – I would research it and write it down. Nothing fancy, no leather-bound journal or fountain pen. Just a ongoing record maintained, ironically, on my phone. Each week, I’d devote a few moments reading the collection back in an effort to imprint the word into my recall.

The list now spans almost twenty sheets, and this tiny habit has been quietly transformative. The payoff is less about showing off with uncommon descriptors – which, let’s face it, can make you appear insufferable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the practice. Each time I search for and note a word, I feel a faint stretch, as though some neglected part of my brain is stirring again. Even if I never use “eidolon” in dialogue, the very act of spotting, documenting and reviewing it interrupts the drift into passive, superficial focus.

There is also a journalling aspect to it – it acts as something of a journal, a log of where I’ve been reading, what I’ve been thinking about and who I’ve been hearing.

It's not as if it’s an easy habit to maintain. It is frequently very impractical. If I’m reading on the tube, I have to pause mid-paragraph, pull out my phone and enter “millennialism” into my digital document while trying not to bump the person squeezed against me. It can slow my reading to a frustrating speed. (The Kindle, with its built-in lexicon, is much easier). And then there’s the revising (which I often forget to do), conscientiously scrolling through my growing vocabulary collection like I’m preparing for a vocabulary test.

Realistically, I integrate perhaps five percent of these terms into my everyday speech. “unreformable” was adopted. “Lugubrious” too. But most of them remain like exhibits – appreciated and catalogued but seldom handled.

Nevertheless, it’s rendered my thinking much sharper. I find myself turning less frequently for the same overused handful of adjectives, and more often for something precise and muscular. Few things are more gratifying than discovering the exact word you were seeking – like locating the lost puzzle piece that snaps the picture into place.

At a time when our gadgets drain our attention with merciless efficiency, it feels rebellious to use my own as a instrument for deliberate thought. And it has restored to me something I worried I’d forfeited – the joy of engaging a intellect that, after a long time of lazy scrolling, is finally stirring again.