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As a youngster, I consumed novels until my eyes blurred. When my GCSEs arrived, I demonstrated the endurance of a ascetic, revising for lengthy periods without a break. But in recent years, I’ve watched that capacity for deep concentration fade into infinite scrolling on my device. My focus now contracts like a snail at the touch of a thumb. Engaging with books for enjoyment seems less like sustenance and more like a marathon. And for a person who writes 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.

So, about a twelve months back, I made a small promise: every time I came across a word I didn’t understand – whether in a novel, an piece, or an overheard discussion – I would look it up and record it. Nothing fancy, no elegant notebook or stylish pen. Just a running list maintained, ironically, on my smartphone. Each seven days, I’d spend a few moments reading the collection back in an attempt to imprint the vocabulary into my memory.

The record now spans almost twenty sheets, and this small ritual has been subtly life-changing. The payoff is less about showing off with obscure descriptors – which, let’s face it, can make you appear unbearable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the practice. Each time I look up and note a term, I feel a faint stretch, as though some underused part of my brain is stirring again. Even if I never use “phantom” in conversation, the very act of spotting, documenting and revising it interrupts the slide into inactive, superficial attention.

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

Not that it’s an simple habit to maintain. It is frequently very impractical. If I’m reading on the subway, I have to pause mid-paragraph, take out my device and enter “millennialism” into my Google doc while trying not to elbow the stranger pressed against me. It can reduce my reading to a frustrating crawl. (The e-reader, with its integrated lexicon, is much easier). And then there’s the revising (which I often forget to do), dutifully browsing through my growing vocabulary collection like I’m studying for a vocabulary test.

In practice, I integrate maybe five percent of these words into my everyday conversation. “Incorrigible” was adopted. “mournful” as well. But most of them stay like exhibits – admired and catalogued but seldom used.

Still, it’s made my mind much keener. I notice I'm turning less often for the same overused handful of descriptors, and more often for something precise and muscular. Few things are more satisfying than discovering the exact word you were searching for – like finding the missing component that snaps the image into place.

In an era when our devices drain our focus with merciless efficiency, it feels subversive to use my own as a instrument for deliberate thought. And it has given me back something I feared I’d forfeited – the pleasure of exercising a mind that, after a long time of slack browsing, is finally stirring again.