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As a child, I consumed novels until my vision blurred. When my GCSEs arrived, I exercised the stamina of a monk, revising for hours without pause. But in recent years, I’ve watched that ability for intense concentration dissolve into endless scrolling on my phone. My focus now contracts like a slug 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 creates content for a living, this is a occupational risk as well as something that left me disheartened. I aimed to restore that mental elasticity, to halt the brain rot.

So, about a year ago, I made a small vow: every time I encountered a word I didn’t understand – whether in a book, an article, or an overheard conversation – I would look it up and record it. Not a thing elaborate, no elegant notebook or stylish pen. Just a running list kept, ironically, on my smartphone. Each seven days, I’d devote a few moments reading the collection back in an attempt to imprint the vocabulary into my memory.

The record now covers almost 20 pages, and this small habit has been subtly life-changing. The payoff is less about showing off with obscure adjectives – which, let’s face it, can make you sound insufferable – and more about the cognitive exercise of the ritual. Each time I look up and note a word, I feel a slight expansion, as though some neglected part of my mind is flexing again. Even if I never deploy “eidolon” in dialogue, the very process of spotting, documenting and reviewing it breaks the slide into inactive, superficial attention.

There is also a journalling aspect to it – it functions as something of a diary, a record of where I’ve been engaging, what I’ve been pondering and who I’ve been hearing.

Not that it’s an easy habit to keep up. It is frequently extremely inconvenient. If I’m reading on the tube, I have to pause mid-paragraph, take out my device and enter “millennialism” into my Google doc while trying not to elbow the person squeezed against me. It can slow my pace to a maddening speed. (The e-reader, with its built-in lexicon, is much easier). And then there’s the revising (which I frequently forget to do), conscientiously scrolling through my growing vocabulary collection like I’m preparing for a word test.

Realistically, I incorporate perhaps five percent of these words into my everyday speech. “unreformable” made the cut. “mournful” too. But most of them remain like museum pieces – admired and listed but rarely handled.

Nevertheless, it’s rendered my thinking much sharper. I find myself reaching less frequently for the same overused handful of descriptors, and more frequently for something precise and strong. Rarely are more satisfying than unearthing the exact term you were seeking – like locating the missing component that snaps the image into place.

In an era when our devices drain our focus with relentless efficiency, it feels rebellious to use mine as a instrument for slow thought. And it has given me back something I worried I’d forfeited – the joy of exercising a intellect that, after years of lazy browsing, is finally stirring again.