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As a youngster, I devoured novels until my vision grew hazy. Once my exams arrived, I demonstrated the endurance of a ascetic, studying for lengthy periods without a break. But in lately, I’ve watched that capacity for intense focus fade into endless scrolling on my device. My attention span now shrinks like a snail at the tap of a finger. Engaging with books for pleasure seems less like sustenance and more like endurance training. And for someone who writes for a living, this is a professional hazard 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 modest promise: every time I encountered a word I didn’t know – whether in a book, an article, or an casual discussion – I would research it and record it. Nothing elaborate, no elegant notebook or fountain pen. Just a ongoing record maintained, ironically, on my smartphone. Each week, I’d devote a few minutes reviewing the collection back in an attempt to lodge the word into my recall.

The record now covers almost 20 pages, and this tiny habit has been subtly transformative. The payoff is less about peacocking with uncommon adjectives – which, to be honest, can make you sound unbearable – and more about the cognitive exercise of the ritual. Each time I look up and note a word, I feel a slight stretch, as though some neglected part of my mind is flexing again. Even if I never use “phantom” in dialogue, the very process of spotting, logging and reviewing it interrupts the drift into passive, superficial focus.

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 hearing.

Not that it’s an simple habit to keep up. It is often extremely impractical. If I’m engaged on the tube, I have to pause mid-paragraph, pull out my phone and type “millenarianism” into my digital document while trying not to bump the stranger squeezed against me. It can reduce my reading to a maddening crawl. (The Kindle, with its integrated lexicon, is much kinder). And then there’s the reviewing (which I often forget to do), conscientiously scrolling through my growing vocabulary collection like I’m studying for a vocabulary test.

In practice, I incorporate perhaps five percent of these terms into my everyday speech. “unreformable” made the cut. “mournful” too. But the majority of them remain like exhibits – admired and listed but seldom handled.

Nevertheless, it’s made my thinking much sharper. I notice I'm reaching less often for the same tired 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 component that snaps the image into place.

At a time when our gadgets siphon off our attention with relentless efficiency, it feels rebellious to use mine as a instrument for deliberate thought. And it has given me back something I worried I’d lost – the joy of engaging a intellect that, after a long time of lazy browsing, is finally stirring again.