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When I was a youngster, I devoured novels until my vision grew hazy. When my exams arrived, I demonstrated the stamina of a ascetic, studying for lengthy periods without a break. But in recent years, I’ve watched that ability for deep focus fade into endless browsing on my phone. My focus now shrinks like a slug at the touch of a finger. Engaging with books for pleasure seems less like sustenance and more like endurance training. And for someone who writes for a profession, this is a professional hazard as well as something that left me disheartened. I wanted to restore that mental elasticity, to stop the brain rot.

Therefore, about a year ago, I made a small vow: every time I came across a term I didn’t know – whether in a novel, an article, or an overheard discussion – I would research it and write it down. Nothing fancy, no elegant notebook or fountain pen. Just a ongoing record kept, amusingly, on my phone. Each week, I’d devote a few moments reading the list back in an effort to lodge the word into my recall.

The list now covers almost twenty sheets, and this tiny habit has been subtly life-changing. The benefit is less about peacocking with uncommon descriptors – which, to be honest, can make you appear insufferable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the ritual. Each time I look up and note a term, I feel a faint expansion, as though some neglected part of my mind is stirring again. Even if I never use “eidolon” in dialogue, the very act of noticing, documenting and revising it breaks the slide into passive, semi-skimmed focus.

There is also a journalling element to it – it functions as something of a diary, a log of where I’ve been engaging, what I’ve been pondering and who I’ve been listening to.

Not that it’s an easy routine to keep up. It is often extremely impractical. If I’m engaged on the tube, I have to stop mid-paragraph, pull out my phone and type “millenarianism” into my Google doc while trying not to elbow the stranger squeezed against me. It can slow my pace to a frustrating crawl. (The Kindle, with its integrated dictionary, is much kinder). And then there’s the revising (which I frequently forget to do), conscientiously scrolling through my growing word-hoard like I’m studying for a vocabulary test.

Realistically, I integrate maybe 5% of these terms into my daily speech. “unreformable” was adopted. “Lugubrious” as well. But most of them stay like exhibits – appreciated and listed but rarely handled.

Still, it’s rendered my thinking much keener. I notice I'm turning less often for the same tired selection of adjectives, and more frequently for something exact and strong. Few things are more gratifying than unearthing the perfect term you were seeking – like finding the lost component that snaps the image into place.

In an era when our devices drain our focus with merciless effectiveness, it feels subversive to use mine as a instrument for slow thought. And it has given me back something I feared I’d lost – the pleasure of exercising a mind that, after years of lazy scrolling, is at last stirring again.