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As a youngster, I consumed books until my eyes grew hazy. When my GCSEs came around, I demonstrated the endurance of a monk, revising for hours without a break. But in recent years, I’ve watched that capacity for deep concentration fade into infinite browsing on my device. My attention span now contracts like a slug at the tap of a thumb. Reading for enjoyment feels less like nourishment and more like a marathon. And for a person who writes for a profession, this is a occupational risk as well as something that left me disheartened. I wanted to regain that cognitive flexibility, to halt the mental decline.

Therefore, about a year ago, I made a small vow: every time I came across a term I didn’t know – whether in a book, an piece, or an casual discussion – I would research it and record it. Not a thing fancy, no elegant notebook or stylish pen. Just a running list maintained, amusingly, on my phone. Each seven days, I’d spend a few moments reading the list back in an attempt to lodge the vocabulary into my memory.

The list now spans almost 20 pages, and this tiny habit has been quietly life-changing. The payoff is less about peacocking with uncommon descriptors – which, to be honest, can make you sound unbearable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the practice. Each time I look up and note a term, I feel a faint stretch, as though some underused part of my brain is stirring again. Even if I never use “phantom” in dialogue, the very process of spotting, documenting and revising it breaks the slide into passive, superficial attention.

Additionally, there's a journalling element to it – it functions as something of a diary, a log of where I’ve been reading, what I’ve been pondering and who I’ve been hearing.

Not that it’s an easy routine to maintain. It is frequently extremely inconvenient. If I’m engaged on the tube, I have to pause mid-paragraph, pull out my phone and type “millennialism” into my Google doc while trying not to elbow the person squeezed against me. It can reduce my reading to a frustrating crawl. (The Kindle, with its integrated dictionary, is much easier). And then there’s the revising (which I often forget to do), dutifully scrolling through my growing word-hoard like I’m studying for a word test.

In practice, I incorporate maybe five percent of these words into my daily conversation. “Incorrigible” made the cut. “mournful” as well. But most of them remain like exhibits – admired and listed but rarely handled.

Nevertheless, it’s rendered my mind much keener. I notice I'm reaching less often for the same overused selection of adjectives, and more often for something precise and strong. Few things are more gratifying than discovering the exact term you were seeking – like locating the missing component that locks the picture into place.

In an era when our devices drain our attention with relentless efficiency, it feels rebellious to use my own as a instrument for deliberate thinking. And it has restored to me something I worried I’d lost – the pleasure of engaging a intellect that, after a long time of slack scrolling, is at last waking up again.