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When I was a child, I devoured books until my eyes grew hazy. Once my GCSEs arrived, I demonstrated the stamina of a ascetic, studying for lengthy periods without a break. But in recent years, I’ve observed that ability for intense concentration fade into infinite browsing on my phone. My focus now contracts like a snail at the tap of a thumb. Engaging with books for enjoyment seems less like nourishment and more like endurance training. And for someone who writes for a profession, this is a occupational risk as well as something that left me disheartened. I wanted to regain that mental elasticity, to halt the mental decline.

So, about a twelve months back, I made a small vow: every time I encountered a word I didn’t understand – whether in a novel, an article, or an overheard discussion – I would look it up 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 minutes reading the collection back in an effort to lodge the word into my memory.

The record now spans almost twenty sheets, and this tiny habit has been subtly life-changing. The benefit is less about showing off with uncommon descriptors – which, to be honest, can make you appear unbearable – and more about the cognitive exercise of the ritual. Each time I look up and note a word, I feel a faint stretch, as though some underused part of my brain is flexing again. Even if I never use “phantom” in dialogue, the very process of spotting, documenting and revising it breaks the drift into inactive, semi-skimmed attention.

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

Not that it’s an easy routine to maintain. It is often very impractical. If I’m reading on the subway, I have to stop mid-paragraph, pull out my phone and type “millennialism” into my Google doc while trying not to bump the person pressed against me. It can reduce my pace to a frustrating crawl. (The Kindle, with its integrated lexicon, is much kinder). And then there’s the reviewing (which I frequently neglect to do), conscientiously browsing through my growing word-hoard like I’m studying for a word test.

In practice, I incorporate perhaps five percent of these words into my everyday conversation. “Incorrigible” made the cut. “Lugubrious” as well. But the majority of them stay like museum pieces – admired and catalogued but rarely handled.

Still, it’s made my thinking much keener. I find myself turning less frequently for the same overused handful of adjectives, and more often for something exact and muscular. Rarely are more satisfying than unearthing the perfect word you were seeking – like finding the lost component that snaps the picture into place.

At a time when our gadgets siphon off our attention with relentless efficiency, it feels subversive to use mine as a tool for slow thought. And it has given me back something I feared I’d lost – the pleasure of engaging a mind that, after a long time of lazy scrolling, is at last stirring again.