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When I was a youngster, I consumed books until my eyes blurred. Once my exams arrived, I demonstrated the endurance of a monk, revising for lengthy periods without pause. But in lately, I’ve observed that ability for intense concentration fade into endless browsing on my device. My attention span now contracts like a slug at the tap of a finger. Engaging with books for pleasure feels less like sustenance and more like a marathon. And for someone who creates content for a profession, this is a professional hazard as well as something that made me sad. I wanted to regain that mental elasticity, to stop the mental decline.

Therefore, about a year ago, I made a modest promise: every time I came across a term I didn’t understand – whether in a novel, an piece, or an overheard discussion – I would research it and write it down. Not a thing elaborate, no elegant notebook or stylish pen. Just a ongoing record kept, ironically, on my phone. Each seven days, I’d devote a few minutes reading the collection back in an effort to lodge the word into my recall.

The record now spans almost twenty sheets, and this small ritual has been subtly transformative. The payoff is less about showing off with uncommon descriptors – which, to be honest, can make you appear insufferable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the practice. Each time I search for and record a term, I feel a faint stretch, as though some neglected part of my mind is stirring again. Even if I never use “phantom” in dialogue, the very process of spotting, logging and reviewing it breaks the drift into inactive, superficial attention.

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

Not that it’s an easy habit to keep up. It is often very inconvenient. If I’m reading on the subway, I have to stop in the middle, pull out my device and type “millenarianism” into my Google doc while trying not to elbow the stranger pressed against me. It can slow my reading to a frustrating speed. (The Kindle, with its integrated lexicon, is much kinder). And then there’s the reviewing (which I often neglect to do), conscientiously browsing through my growing word-hoard like I’m preparing for a vocabulary test.

Realistically, I integrate perhaps 5% of these words into my daily conversation. “unreformable” made the cut. “Lugubrious” too. But most of them remain like exhibits – appreciated and listed but seldom handled.

Nevertheless, it’s made my thinking much sharper. I find myself turning less frequently for the same tired handful of descriptors, and more frequently for something precise and muscular. Few things are more gratifying than discovering the perfect term you were searching for – like locating the missing component that snaps the picture into place.

At a time when our gadgets siphon off our attention with relentless efficiency, it feels rebellious to use mine as a instrument for deliberate thinking. And it has given me back something I feared I’d forfeited – the pleasure of exercising a mind that, after years of slack scrolling, is finally waking up again.