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As a child, I devoured novels until my eyes grew hazy. Once my GCSEs came around, I demonstrated the stamina of a monk, studying for lengthy periods without a break. But in recent years, I’ve observed that capacity for deep concentration fade into infinite browsing on my phone. My attention span now shrinks like a slug at the touch of a thumb. Engaging with books for enjoyment feels less like sustenance and more like endurance training. And for a person 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.

Therefore, about a year ago, I made a small vow: every time I came across a word I didn’t understand – whether in a novel, an piece, or an casual conversation – I would research it and write it down. Not a thing fancy, no elegant notebook or stylish pen. Just a ongoing record kept, ironically, on my phone. Each seven days, I’d devote a few moments reading the list back in an effort to imprint the word into my memory.

The list now covers almost 20 pages, and this tiny ritual has been quietly life-changing. The benefit 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 practice. Each time I search for and record a term, I feel a slight expansion, as though some neglected part of my brain is flexing again. Even if I never deploy “phantom” in conversation, the very process of noticing, documenting and reviewing it interrupts the drift into passive, semi-skimmed attention.

There is also a journalling aspect to it – it functions as something of a journal, a record 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 habit to maintain. It is often extremely impractical. If I’m engaged on the subway, I have to stop in the middle, take out my phone and enter “millenarianism” into my digital document while trying not to elbow the stranger squeezed against me. It can reduce my reading to a maddening crawl. (The Kindle, with its integrated dictionary, is much kinder). And then there’s the reviewing (which I frequently forget to do), dutifully browsing through my expanding word-hoard like I’m preparing for a vocabulary test.

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

Nevertheless, it’s made my mind much keener. I find myself turning less frequently for the same overused handful of adjectives, and more often for something exact and strong. Rarely are more gratifying than unearthing the exact word you were searching for – like locating the missing component that snaps the image into place.

At a time when our devices siphon off our focus with merciless effectiveness, it feels rebellious to use mine as a instrument for deliberate thought. And it has given me back something I feared I’d lost – the joy of exercising a mind that, after years of lazy scrolling, is finally waking up again.