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As a youngster, I consumed books until my vision blurred. When my exams came around, I demonstrated the stamina of a monk, studying for lengthy periods without pause. But in recent years, I’ve observed that ability for deep focus dissolve into endless browsing on my phone. My focus now contracts like a slug at the tap of a finger. Reading for enjoyment seems less like nourishment and more like endurance training. And for someone who creates content for a living, this is a professional hazard as well as something that made me sad. I aimed to regain that mental elasticity, to stop the brain rot.

So, about a twelve months back, I made a small vow: every time I came across a term I didn’t understand – whether in a novel, an article, or an overheard discussion – I would look it up and write it down. Not a thing fancy, no leather-bound journal or fountain pen. Just a ongoing record kept, amusingly, on my smartphone. Each week, I’d spend a few moments reading the list back in an attempt to lodge the vocabulary into my recall.

The record now covers almost 20 pages, and this small habit has been subtly transformative. The payoff is less about showing off with uncommon descriptors – which, let’s face it, can make you appear unbearable – and more about the cognitive exercise of the ritual. Each time I look up and record a term, I feel a faint expansion, as though some underused part of my brain is flexing again. Even if I never use “eidolon” in dialogue, the very process of noticing, logging and reviewing it breaks the slide into passive, superficial attention.

Additionally, there's a diary-keeping aspect to it – it functions as something of a journal, a log 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 extremely impractical. If I’m engaged on the subway, I have to stop mid-paragraph, take out my device and enter “millenarianism” into my digital document while trying not to bump the person pressed against me. It can reduce my pace to a maddening crawl. (The Kindle, with its integrated dictionary, is much easier). And then there’s the reviewing (which I often neglect to do), conscientiously browsing through my expanding vocabulary collection like I’m preparing for a vocabulary test.

In practice, I integrate perhaps 5% of these words into my daily conversation. “unreformable” made the cut. “Lugubrious” too. But the majority of them remain like exhibits – admired and catalogued but rarely used.

Nevertheless, it’s made my mind much sharper. I find myself turning less often for the same tired handful of descriptors, and more frequently for something precise and muscular. Few things are more gratifying than unearthing the perfect term you were seeking – like locating the missing component that snaps the image into position.

In an era when our gadgets drain our attention with merciless efficiency, 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 pleasure of exercising a mind that, after years of slack browsing, is finally stirring again.