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When I was a child, I consumed books until my eyes blurred. When my exams arrived, I demonstrated the stamina of a monk, revising for lengthy periods without pause. But in recent years, I’ve watched that ability for deep concentration dissolve into infinite scrolling on my phone. My focus now shrinks like a snail at the touch of a thumb. Engaging with books for enjoyment seems less like nourishment and more like endurance training. 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 restore that cognitive flexibility, to stop the mental decline.

So, about a year ago, I made a small promise: every time I came across a term I didn’t know – whether in a novel, an piece, or an overheard discussion – I would research it and record it. Nothing fancy, no elegant notebook or stylish pen. Just a running list kept, ironically, on my phone. Each seven days, I’d devote 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 small habit has been quietly life-changing. The benefit is less about peacocking with uncommon descriptors – which, to be honest, can make you appear unbearable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the practice. Each time I search for and record a term, I feel a faint expansion, as though some underused part of my brain is flexing again. Even if I never deploy “eidolon” in conversation, the very act of noticing, logging and revising it interrupts the slide into passive, superficial focus.

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

It's not as if it’s an easy habit to maintain. 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 “millenarianism” into my digital document while trying not to elbow the stranger pressed against me. It can slow my reading to a frustrating speed. (The Kindle, with its integrated lexicon, is much kinder). And then there’s the revising (which I frequently neglect to do), conscientiously browsing through my expanding vocabulary collection like I’m studying for a vocabulary test.

In practice, I integrate perhaps 5% of these terms into my everyday speech. “unreformable” made the cut. “mournful” too. But the majority of them stay like exhibits – appreciated and catalogued but rarely used.

Still, it’s made my mind much keener. I find myself turning less often for the same overused selection of descriptors, and more often for something precise and strong. Rarely are more satisfying than unearthing the perfect word you were seeking – like locating the missing puzzle piece that locks the image into position.

At a time when our devices siphon off our attention with merciless efficiency, it feels subversive to use my own as a tool for slow thought. And it has given me back something I feared I’d forfeited – the joy of exercising a mind that, after years of slack browsing, is at last stirring again.