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As a child, I devoured books until my eyes blurred. When my GCSEs came around, I demonstrated the stamina of a monk, revising for lengthy periods without pause. But in recent years, I’ve watched that ability for intense focus dissolve into infinite scrolling on my device. My attention span now contracts like a slug at the touch of a thumb. Engaging with books for pleasure feels less like nourishment and more like a marathon. And for someone who creates content for a living, this is a professional hazard as well as something that made me sad. I aimed to regain that mental elasticity, to halt 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 elaborate, no elegant notebook or stylish pen. Just a running list maintained, ironically, on my smartphone. Each seven days, I’d devote a few minutes reviewing the collection back in an attempt to imprint the word into my memory.

The record now covers almost 20 pages, and this small ritual has been quietly life-changing. The payoff is less about peacocking with obscure descriptors – which, to be honest, can make you sound insufferable – and more about the cognitive exercise of the practice. Each time I search for and note a term, I feel a faint expansion, as though some underused part of my mind is flexing again. Even if I never use “phantom” in dialogue, the very act of noticing, documenting and reviewing it breaks the drift into inactive, superficial attention.

Additionally, there's a journalling element to it – it functions as something of a diary, a log of where I’ve been reading, what I’ve been pondering and who I’ve been listening to.

Not that it’s an simple routine to keep up. It is often very impractical. If I’m engaged on the subway, I have to pause in the middle, take out my phone and type “millenarianism” into my digital document while trying not to elbow the person pressed against me. It can reduce my pace to a frustrating crawl. (The e-reader, with its integrated lexicon, is much easier). And then there’s the reviewing (which I often neglect to do), conscientiously scrolling through my growing word-hoard like I’m studying for a vocabulary test.

In practice, I integrate perhaps five percent of these terms into my daily speech. “Incorrigible” made the cut. “mournful” as well. But the majority of them remain like exhibits – appreciated and listed but seldom handled.

Still, it’s made my thinking much sharper. I find myself turning less often for the same overused selection of adjectives, and more frequently for something exact and muscular. Few things are more gratifying than discovering the exact term you were seeking – like locating the lost component that snaps the picture into place.

At a time when our gadgets siphon off our attention with relentless effectiveness, it feels rebellious to use my own as a tool for deliberate thought. And it has restored to me something I feared I’d lost – the pleasure of exercising a mind that, after years of lazy browsing, is finally stirring again.