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When I was a youngster, I devoured books until my vision grew hazy. Once my GCSEs came around, I demonstrated the stamina of a monk, studying for hours without pause. But in lately, I’ve observed that capacity for intense focus fade into infinite scrolling on my device. My attention span now contracts like a snail at the tap of a finger. Engaging with books for enjoyment seems less like sustenance and more like endurance training. And for someone who writes for a profession, this is a professional hazard as well as something that made me sad. I aimed to regain that cognitive flexibility, to halt the brain rot.

So, about a twelve months back, I made a modest vow: every time I came across a term I didn’t understand – whether in a book, an piece, or an overheard conversation – I would research it and write it down. Nothing elaborate, no leather-bound journal or fountain pen. Just a ongoing record kept, ironically, on my phone. Each week, I’d devote a few minutes reading the collection back in an effort to lodge the vocabulary into my memory.

The list now covers almost twenty sheets, and this tiny ritual has been subtly transformative. The payoff is less about peacocking with obscure adjectives – which, let’s face it, can make you sound unbearable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the ritual. Each time I search for and note a term, I feel a slight expansion, as though some neglected part of my brain is flexing again. Even if I never use “phantom” in conversation, the very process of noticing, logging and revising it breaks the slide into passive, superficial focus.

Additionally, there's a journalling element to it – it functions as something of a diary, 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 routine to maintain. It is frequently very impractical. If I’m reading on the subway, I have to stop mid-paragraph, pull out my device and type “millenarianism” into my Google doc while trying not to bump the person pressed against me. It can reduce my reading to a frustrating speed. (The e-reader, with its integrated lexicon, is much easier). And then there’s the reviewing (which I often forget to do), conscientiously browsing through my growing word-hoard like I’m preparing for a vocabulary test.

In practice, I incorporate perhaps five percent of these terms into my daily conversation. “unreformable” made the cut. “Lugubrious” as well. But the majority of them stay like exhibits – appreciated and listed but seldom used.

Still, it’s made my thinking much sharper. I notice I'm turning less frequently for the same tired handful of descriptors, and more often for something precise and muscular. Few things are more satisfying than discovering the exact term you were searching for – like locating the lost puzzle piece that snaps the image into place.

In an era when our gadgets siphon off our focus with merciless effectiveness, it feels subversive to use mine as a tool for slow thought. And it has restored to me something I feared I’d lost – the joy of exercising a mind that, after years of lazy scrolling, is at last waking up again.