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As a youngster, I devoured books until my eyes grew hazy. Once my GCSEs arrived, I demonstrated the stamina of a monk, revising for lengthy periods without pause. But in recent years, I’ve watched that capacity for intense concentration dissolve into endless browsing on my device. My attention span now shrinks like a slug at the tap of a finger. Engaging with books for enjoyment feels less like sustenance and more like endurance training. And for someone who writes for a profession, this is a occupational risk as well as something that left me disheartened. I wanted to regain that cognitive flexibility, to halt the mental decline.

So, about a year ago, I made a modest vow: every time I encountered a word I didn’t know – whether in a novel, an piece, or an overheard discussion – I would look it up and record it. Nothing elaborate, no elegant notebook or fountain pen. Just a ongoing record maintained, ironically, on my smartphone. Each seven days, I’d spend a few moments reviewing the list back in an effort to lodge the word into my recall.

The record now spans almost twenty sheets, and this tiny habit has been subtly transformative. The payoff is less about peacocking with uncommon descriptors – which, to be honest, can make you appear unbearable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the ritual. Each time I look up and record a term, I feel a slight expansion, as though some neglected part of my mind is flexing again. Even if I never use “phantom” in dialogue, the very process of spotting, logging and revising it interrupts the drift into passive, superficial focus.

There is also a journalling aspect to it – it acts as something of a diary, a log of where I’ve been reading, 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 very inconvenient. If I’m engaged on the subway, I have to pause in the middle, pull out my phone and type “millenarianism” into my digital document while trying not to bump the person squeezed against me. It can slow my reading to a maddening crawl. (The e-reader, with its built-in dictionary, is much kinder). And then there’s the revising (which I often forget to do), dutifully scrolling through my growing word-hoard like I’m preparing for a word test.

In practice, I integrate maybe 5% of these terms into my everyday speech. “Incorrigible” made the cut. “mournful” too. But the majority of them stay like museum pieces – admired and catalogued but rarely handled.

Nevertheless, it’s rendered my thinking much keener. I notice I'm turning less frequently for the same overused handful of descriptors, and more frequently for something exact and muscular. Few things are more satisfying than discovering the perfect term you were seeking – like finding the missing puzzle piece that locks the picture into place.

At a time when our devices drain our attention with merciless efficiency, it feels rebellious to use mine as a instrument for slow thinking. And it has given me back something I feared I’d forfeited – the joy of exercising a intellect that, after years of lazy browsing, is at last waking up again.