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As a child, I consumed novels until my vision blurred. Once my GCSEs came around, I exercised the endurance of a ascetic, studying for lengthy periods without pause. But in lately, I’ve watched that ability for deep focus fade into endless browsing on my device. My attention span now shrinks like a snail at the tap of a finger. Reading for pleasure seems 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 wanted to regain that mental elasticity, to stop the brain rot.

Therefore, about a year ago, I made a modest promise: every time I encountered a word I didn’t know – whether in a novel, an piece, or an overheard conversation – I would research it and write it down. Not a thing elaborate, no elegant notebook or stylish pen. Just a running list maintained, amusingly, on my smartphone. Each week, I’d spend a few moments reading the list back in an effort to lodge the vocabulary into my memory.

The record now covers almost 20 pages, and this small ritual has been quietly transformative. The benefit is less about peacocking with obscure descriptors – which, let’s face it, can make you sound unbearable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the practice. Each time I look up and note a word, I feel a slight stretch, as though some underused part of my mind is stirring again. Even if I never use “eidolon” in conversation, the very act of spotting, documenting and reviewing it interrupts the slide into passive, superficial attention.

There is also a journalling element to it – it functions 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 simple routine to maintain. It is often very inconvenient. If I’m engaged on the tube, I have to pause mid-paragraph, pull out my device and enter “millennialism” into my Google doc while trying not to bump the stranger pressed against me. It can reduce my reading to a frustrating speed. (The Kindle, with its integrated lexicon, is much easier). And then there’s the revising (which I frequently forget to do), dutifully scrolling through my growing vocabulary collection like I’m studying for a word test.

In practice, I incorporate maybe 5% of these terms into my daily speech. “Incorrigible” made the cut. “Lugubrious” too. But the majority of them stay like exhibits – appreciated and listed but rarely handled.

Still, it’s made my mind much keener. I notice I'm turning less frequently for the same overused handful of adjectives, and more frequently for something exact and strong. Few things are more gratifying than unearthing the perfect term you were searching for – like locating the missing puzzle piece that snaps the image into place.

In an era when our gadgets drain our focus with merciless effectiveness, it feels subversive to use my own as a tool for deliberate thinking. And it has given me back something I feared I’d forfeited – the pleasure of engaging a mind that, after a long time of lazy scrolling, is at last stirring again.