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As a youngster, I devoured novels until my eyes grew hazy. When my exams came around, I exercised the stamina of a ascetic, revising for hours without pause. But in recent years, I’ve observed that ability for deep concentration fade into endless browsing on my phone. My attention span now contracts like a slug at the tap of a finger. Reading for pleasure feels less like nourishment and more like a marathon. And for a person who writes for a profession, this is a occupational risk as well as something that made me sad. I aimed to restore that cognitive flexibility, to stop the mental decline.

So, about a twelve months back, I made a modest promise: every time I encountered a term I didn’t understand – whether in a book, an article, or an overheard discussion – I would research it and record it. Nothing fancy, no leather-bound journal or stylish pen. Just a running list kept, amusingly, on my smartphone. Each seven days, I’d spend a few minutes reading the list back in an effort to imprint the vocabulary into my recall.

The list now covers almost 20 pages, and this small habit has been subtly transformative. The payoff is less about showing off with uncommon adjectives – which, let’s face it, can make you appear unbearable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the ritual. Each time I search for and note a word, I feel a faint expansion, as though some underused part of my brain is stirring again. Even if I never use “eidolon” in dialogue, the very act of spotting, documenting and revising it breaks the slide into inactive, superficial attention.

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

It's not as if it’s an simple habit to keep up. It is frequently extremely impractical. If I’m reading on the subway, I have to pause in the middle, take out my phone and enter “millennialism” into my Google doc while trying not to elbow the person pressed against me. It can slow my pace to a maddening speed. (The e-reader, with its integrated lexicon, is much easier). And then there’s the revising (which I often forget to do), dutifully browsing through my growing vocabulary collection like I’m preparing for a word test.

In practice, I incorporate perhaps 5% of these words into my everyday speech. “unreformable” was adopted. “mournful” as well. But the majority of them remain like museum pieces – appreciated and listed but seldom used.

Still, it’s made my mind much sharper. I notice I'm turning less often for the same tired selection of adjectives, and more frequently for something precise and strong. Few things are more gratifying than unearthing the exact term you were seeking – like locating the missing puzzle piece that locks the image into position.

At a time when our gadgets siphon off our focus with merciless effectiveness, 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 joy of engaging a intellect that, after years of lazy scrolling, is finally waking up again.