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As a youngster, I consumed novels until my eyes blurred. Once my exams arrived, I exercised the stamina of a monk, studying for hours without pause. But in recent years, I’ve observed that capacity for deep focus fade into endless scrolling on my device. My focus now shrinks like a snail at the tap of a thumb. Reading for pleasure seems less like nourishment and more like a marathon. And for a person who creates content for a profession, this is a professional hazard as well as something that left me disheartened. I aimed to regain that mental elasticity, to halt the mental decline.

So, about a year ago, I made a small vow: every time I came across a word I didn’t know – whether in a novel, an piece, or an casual conversation – I would research it and record it. Not a thing fancy, no elegant notebook or fountain pen. Just a ongoing record maintained, amusingly, on my phone. Each week, I’d spend a few minutes reviewing the collection back in an effort to imprint the vocabulary into my memory.

The list now covers almost 20 pages, and this small habit has been subtly life-changing. The benefit is less about showing off with obscure descriptors – which, to be honest, can make you appear insufferable – and more about the cognitive exercise of the practice. Each time I look up and note a term, I feel a slight expansion, as though some neglected part of my mind is flexing again. Even if I never use “phantom” in conversation, the very act of noticing, logging and reviewing it interrupts the drift into inactive, superficial focus.

Additionally, there's a journalling element to it – it acts as something of a diary, a log 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 keep up. It is often very inconvenient. If I’m engaged on the tube, I have to pause in the middle, pull out my phone and type “millennialism” into my digital document while trying not to bump the stranger squeezed against me. It can reduce my reading to a frustrating crawl. (The Kindle, with its integrated dictionary, is much kinder). And then there’s the revising (which I often neglect to do), conscientiously scrolling through my expanding vocabulary collection like I’m preparing for a word test.

Realistically, I incorporate perhaps five percent of these terms into my everyday conversation. “Incorrigible” made the cut. “mournful” too. But the majority of them remain like museum pieces – appreciated and listed but seldom used.

Nevertheless, it’s made my thinking much keener. I find myself reaching less often for the same tired selection of descriptors, and more often for something precise and strong. Few things are more satisfying than discovering the exact term you were searching for – like finding the lost component that locks the image into place.

In an era when our devices 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 lost – the joy of engaging a mind that, after years of lazy browsing, is at last waking up again.