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When I was a youngster, I consumed books until my vision blurred. When my exams came around, I demonstrated the endurance of a monk, studying for hours without a break. But in recent years, I’ve observed that ability for intense concentration dissolve into endless scrolling on my phone. My focus now shrinks like a snail at the touch of a finger. Engaging with books for enjoyment feels less like sustenance and more like endurance training. And for someone who creates content for a living, this is a professional hazard as well as something that left me disheartened. I aimed to restore that mental elasticity, to halt the mental decline.

Therefore, about a year ago, I made a modest promise: every time I encountered a word I didn’t understand – whether in a novel, an article, or an overheard conversation – I would research it and write it down. Not a thing elaborate, no elegant notebook or fountain pen. Just a running list maintained, ironically, on my smartphone. Each week, I’d spend a few minutes reviewing the collection back in an attempt to lodge the word into my recall.

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

There is also a diary-keeping element to it – it functions as something of a journal, a record of where I’ve been reading, what I’ve been pondering and who I’ve been hearing.

It's not as if it’s an simple habit to maintain. It is frequently extremely inconvenient. If I’m reading on the tube, I have to stop in the middle, take out my device and enter “millennialism” into my digital document while trying not to elbow the person squeezed against me. It can slow my reading to a maddening speed. (The Kindle, with its integrated lexicon, is much easier). And then there’s the revising (which I frequently neglect to do), dutifully scrolling through my growing word-hoard like I’m studying for a vocabulary test.

In practice, I incorporate maybe five percent of these terms into my everyday speech. “Incorrigible” made the cut. “mournful” as well. But most of them remain like museum pieces – appreciated and listed but rarely used.

Still, it’s rendered my thinking much sharper. I notice I'm turning less frequently for the same tired handful of adjectives, and more often for something exact and strong. Rarely are more satisfying than unearthing the perfect word you were seeking – like locating the lost puzzle piece that locks the image into place.

At a time when our devices drain our focus with merciless effectiveness, it feels subversive to use mine as a tool for deliberate thought. And it has given me back something I worried I’d lost – the joy of engaging a mind that, after years of lazy scrolling, is at last waking up again.