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As a youngster, I consumed books until my eyes grew hazy. Once my GCSEs came around, I exercised the stamina of a monk, studying for hours without pause. But in recent years, I’ve observed that ability for deep concentration dissolve into endless browsing on my device. My focus now shrinks like a slug at the tap of a finger. Reading for pleasure feels less like nourishment and more like a marathon. And for someone who creates content for a profession, this is a occupational risk as well as something that left me disheartened. I aimed to restore that mental elasticity, to stop the mental decline.

Therefore, about a year ago, I made a small vow: every time I encountered a word I didn’t know – whether in a book, an article, or an casual conversation – I would look it up and write it down. Nothing elaborate, no leather-bound journal or fountain pen. Just a running list kept, ironically, on my smartphone. Each seven days, I’d devote a few moments reading the list back in an attempt to lodge the word into my memory.

The list now covers almost twenty sheets, and this small ritual has been quietly transformative. The benefit is less about showing off with uncommon adjectives – which, to be honest, can make you sound insufferable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the practice. Each time I search for and record a word, I feel a slight stretch, as though some underused part of my brain is stirring again. Even if I never use “phantom” in dialogue, the very process of noticing, documenting and revising it breaks the slide into inactive, superficial focus.

Additionally, there's a diary-keeping element to it – it functions as something of a journal, a log of where I’ve been engaging, what I’ve been thinking about and who I’ve been hearing.

It's not as if it’s an simple routine to keep up. It is often very inconvenient. If I’m reading on the tube, I have to pause in the middle, take out my phone and type “millenarianism” into my Google doc while trying not to elbow the person pressed against me. It can slow my pace to a maddening speed. (The e-reader, with its integrated dictionary, is much easier). And then there’s the reviewing (which I often forget to do), conscientiously scrolling through my growing vocabulary collection like I’m studying for a word test.

Realistically, I integrate perhaps five percent of these terms into my everyday conversation. “Incorrigible” made the cut. “Lugubrious” too. But most of them remain like museum pieces – appreciated and listed but seldom handled.

Nevertheless, it’s rendered my mind much sharper. I find myself reaching less often for the same overused handful of descriptors, and more frequently for something exact and muscular. Rarely are more satisfying than unearthing the perfect term you were seeking – like locating the lost puzzle piece that locks the image into position.

At a time when our gadgets drain our focus with relentless efficiency, it feels rebellious to use mine as a tool for deliberate thinking. And it has given me back something I worried I’d forfeited – the joy of engaging a intellect that, after years of lazy scrolling, is finally stirring again.