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When I was a youngster, I devoured novels until my eyes blurred. When my GCSEs came around, I exercised the stamina of a monk, revising for lengthy periods without pause. But in recent years, I’ve watched that ability for intense focus fade into endless browsing on my device. My attention span now contracts like a snail at the touch of a thumb. Reading for enjoyment seems less like nourishment and more like a marathon. And for a person who creates content for a profession, this is a occupational risk as well as something that made me sad. I aimed to regain that cognitive flexibility, to halt the mental decline.

Therefore, about a year ago, I made a small promise: every time I encountered a term I didn’t understand – whether in a book, an piece, or an casual discussion – I would research it and record it. Not a thing elaborate, no leather-bound journal or stylish pen. Just a ongoing record maintained, amusingly, on my smartphone. Each seven days, I’d spend a few moments reading the list back in an effort to lodge the vocabulary into my recall.

The list now covers almost 20 pages, and this tiny ritual has been subtly life-changing. The benefit is less about peacocking with obscure adjectives – which, to be honest, can make you sound unbearable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the ritual. Each time I search for and record a word, I feel a slight expansion, as though some underused part of my mind is flexing again. Even if I never use “phantom” in dialogue, the very process of noticing, logging and reviewing it breaks the slide into inactive, superficial attention.

Additionally, there's a diary-keeping aspect to it – it functions as something of a journal, a record 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 simple habit to keep up. It is frequently very inconvenient. If I’m reading on the subway, I have to pause mid-paragraph, pull out my device and enter “millenarianism” into my Google doc while trying not to elbow the person pressed against me. It can reduce my reading to a frustrating crawl. (The e-reader, with its built-in lexicon, is much kinder). And then there’s the reviewing (which I frequently forget to do), dutifully browsing through my expanding vocabulary collection like I’m preparing for a word test.

Realistically, I incorporate perhaps 5% of these words into my daily speech. “unreformable” made the cut. “Lugubrious” as well. But most of them remain like exhibits – appreciated and listed but rarely used.

Nevertheless, it’s rendered my thinking much keener. I notice I'm reaching less often for the same tired handful of adjectives, and more frequently for something exact and strong. Rarely are more gratifying than discovering the exact term you were searching for – like finding the lost puzzle piece that snaps the image into position.

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