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When I was a youngster, I devoured books until my eyes grew hazy. When my GCSEs came around, I demonstrated the endurance of a monk, revising for hours without a break. But in recent years, I’ve watched that ability for intense concentration dissolve into infinite browsing on my device. My focus now shrinks like a slug at the touch of a finger. Reading for enjoyment feels less like sustenance and more like endurance training. And for a person who writes for a living, this is a professional hazard as well as something that made me sad. I wanted to restore that cognitive flexibility, to halt the brain rot.

Therefore, about a year ago, I made a small promise: every time I encountered a word I didn’t know – whether in a book, an piece, or an overheard discussion – I would research it and record it. Not a thing fancy, no elegant notebook or stylish pen. Just a ongoing record kept, ironically, on my phone. Each seven days, I’d spend a few moments reading the collection back in an attempt to lodge the vocabulary into my recall.

The list now spans almost twenty sheets, and this small habit has been quietly transformative. The payoff is less about showing off with uncommon adjectives – which, to be honest, can make you appear insufferable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the ritual. Each time I look up and record a term, I feel a faint stretch, as though some neglected part of my mind is flexing again. Even if I never deploy “phantom” in dialogue, the very act of spotting, logging and reviewing it interrupts the slide into inactive, superficial attention.

There is also a diary-keeping element to it – it acts as something of a journal, a record of where I’ve been reading, what I’ve been thinking about and who I’ve been hearing.

It's not as if it’s an simple routine to maintain. It is frequently very inconvenient. If I’m engaged on the subway, I have to stop in the middle, pull out my phone and enter “millenarianism” into my Google doc while trying not to bump the person pressed against me. It can slow my reading to a maddening speed. (The Kindle, with its built-in dictionary, is much kinder). And then there’s the revising (which I frequently neglect to do), conscientiously scrolling through my expanding word-hoard like I’m preparing for a word test.

In practice, I integrate perhaps 5% of these words into my daily speech. “Incorrigible” was adopted. “Lugubrious” too. But the majority of them stay like exhibits – admired and listed but rarely handled.

Still, it’s rendered my mind much sharper. I notice I'm turning less frequently for the same tired selection of descriptors, and more frequently for something exact and strong. Few things are more satisfying than unearthing the exact word you were searching for – like locating the missing component that locks the picture into position.

In an era when our devices drain our attention with relentless effectiveness, it feels rebellious to use my own as a tool for deliberate thinking. And it has restored to me something I worried I’d forfeited – the joy of engaging a intellect that, after years of slack scrolling, is at last stirring again.