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As a youngster, I consumed novels until my vision grew hazy. When my exams came around, I demonstrated the stamina of a monk, studying for lengthy periods without pause. But in lately, I’ve watched that capacity for deep concentration fade into endless browsing on my device. My focus now contracts like a snail at the tap of a thumb. Engaging with books for pleasure seems less like nourishment and more like endurance training. And for someone who creates content for a profession, this is a occupational risk as well as something that made me sad. I aimed to regain that mental elasticity, to halt the brain rot.

Therefore, about a twelve months back, I made a small promise: every time I encountered a word I didn’t know – whether in a book, an article, or an casual conversation – I would research it and write it down. Nothing elaborate, no leather-bound journal or stylish pen. Just a running list maintained, amusingly, on my phone. Each week, I’d devote a few moments reading the list back in an attempt to imprint the word into my recall.

The list now covers almost 20 pages, and this tiny habit has been quietly life-changing. The payoff is less about showing off with obscure adjectives – which, to be honest, can make you sound unbearable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the practice. Each time I look up and record a word, I feel a slight expansion, as though some neglected part of my mind is stirring again. Even if I never deploy “phantom” in dialogue, the very process of noticing, documenting and reviewing it interrupts the slide into inactive, superficial attention.

There is also a journalling aspect to it – it functions as something of a diary, a record of where I’ve been engaging, what I’ve been thinking about and who I’ve been listening to.

It's not as if it’s an easy routine to keep up. It is often very inconvenient. If I’m reading on the subway, I have to pause mid-paragraph, pull out my phone and type “millennialism” into my digital document while trying not to bump the stranger pressed against me. It can reduce my pace to a maddening speed. (The Kindle, with its integrated dictionary, is much kinder). And then there’s the revising (which I frequently neglect to do), conscientiously scrolling through my expanding word-hoard like I’m studying for a word test.

Realistically, I integrate maybe 5% of these words into my everyday conversation. “Incorrigible” was adopted. “mournful” too. But the majority of them remain like exhibits – appreciated and catalogued but rarely used.

Nevertheless, it’s made my thinking much keener. I notice I'm reaching less often for the same tired selection of descriptors, and more often for something exact and muscular. Few things are more gratifying than discovering the exact word you were seeking – like locating the lost component that snaps the picture into position.

In an era when our gadgets drain our attention with relentless efficiency, it feels subversive to use my own as a instrument for slow thinking. And it has restored to me something I feared I’d lost – the joy of engaging a mind that, after years of lazy browsing, is at last waking up again.