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When I was a child, I devoured books until my vision blurred. Once my GCSEs arrived, I exercised the endurance of a monk, studying for hours without pause. But in recent years, I’ve watched that capacity for intense concentration dissolve into endless scrolling on my phone. My attention span now shrinks like a snail at the touch of a finger. Engaging with books for enjoyment seems less like sustenance and more like a marathon. And for a person who creates content for a living, this is a occupational risk as well as something that left me disheartened. I aimed to regain that cognitive flexibility, to stop the mental decline.

Therefore, about a twelve months back, I made a small promise: every time I came across a term I didn’t understand – whether in a book, an article, or an casual discussion – I would look it up and write it down. Not a thing elaborate, no leather-bound journal or stylish pen. Just a running list maintained, amusingly, on my phone. Each week, I’d devote a few moments reviewing the collection back in an attempt to lodge the word into my memory.

The record now covers almost twenty sheets, and this small habit has been subtly life-changing. The benefit is less about showing off with obscure adjectives – which, let’s face it, can make you appear unbearable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the practice. Each time I search for and note a word, I feel a faint expansion, as though some neglected part of my mind is stirring again. Even if I never deploy “eidolon” in conversation, the very process of spotting, documenting and revising it interrupts the slide into inactive, semi-skimmed focus.

There is also a journalling element to it – it acts as something of a journal, a log of where I’ve been reading, what I’ve been thinking about and who I’ve been listening to.

It's not as if it’s an easy habit to maintain. It is frequently very inconvenient. If I’m reading on the tube, I have to stop mid-paragraph, pull out my phone and type “millenarianism” into my Google doc while trying not to elbow the stranger squeezed against me. It can slow my reading to a maddening speed. (The e-reader, with its built-in dictionary, is much kinder). And then there’s the reviewing (which I frequently forget to do), dutifully scrolling through my growing vocabulary collection like I’m preparing for a vocabulary test.

Realistically, I integrate perhaps 5% of these words into my daily speech. “Incorrigible” was adopted. “Lugubrious” as well. But most of them stay like museum pieces – appreciated and listed but rarely handled.

Still, it’s made my thinking much sharper. I notice I'm turning less often for the same tired handful of descriptors, and more frequently for something exact and strong. Few things are more satisfying than discovering the exact term you were searching for – like finding the lost component that locks the picture into place.

At a time when our gadgets drain our attention with merciless efficiency, it feels subversive to use my own as a instrument for slow thought. And it has given me back something I feared I’d forfeited – the joy of engaging a mind that, after years of slack browsing, is at last waking up again.