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When I was a youngster, I devoured novels until my eyes grew hazy. Once my GCSEs arrived, I exercised the endurance of a monk, revising for lengthy periods without pause. But in lately, I’ve observed that capacity for intense focus fade into endless scrolling on my device. My attention span now contracts like a snail at the tap of a thumb. Engaging with books for enjoyment seems less like sustenance and more like endurance training. And for a person who creates content for a living, this is a occupational risk as well as something that left me disheartened. I wanted to regain that cognitive flexibility, to stop the mental decline.

Therefore, about a year ago, I made a small vow: every time I encountered a term I didn’t understand – whether in a book, an piece, or an overheard conversation – I would look it up and write it down. Nothing elaborate, no leather-bound journal or fountain pen. Just a running list maintained, amusingly, on my phone. Each week, I’d spend a few moments reviewing the collection back in an attempt to imprint the word into my recall.

The list now spans almost 20 pages, and this small habit has been quietly life-changing. The benefit is less about showing off with uncommon descriptors – which, let’s face it, can make you sound insufferable – and more about the cognitive exercise of the ritual. Each time I search for and note a word, I feel a slight expansion, as though some underused part of my mind is flexing again. Even if I never deploy “eidolon” in conversation, the very process of noticing, logging and reviewing it interrupts the drift into passive, semi-skimmed attention.

Additionally, there's a journalling aspect to it – it acts as something of a journal, a log of where I’ve been engaging, what I’ve been thinking about and who I’ve been hearing.

Not that it’s an easy routine to maintain. It is frequently very inconvenient. If I’m reading on the tube, I have to pause in the middle, pull out my device and type “millenarianism” into my Google doc while trying not to bump the stranger pressed against me. It can slow my pace to a maddening crawl. (The e-reader, with its integrated dictionary, is much easier). And then there’s the reviewing (which I often neglect to do), dutifully scrolling through my expanding vocabulary collection like I’m preparing for a vocabulary test.

In practice, I incorporate maybe five percent of these words into my daily conversation. “Incorrigible” made the cut. “Lugubrious” too. But the majority of them remain like museum pieces – appreciated and catalogued but rarely handled.

Nevertheless, it’s rendered my mind much keener. I notice I'm reaching less often for the same overused handful of descriptors, and more frequently for something exact and strong. Rarely are more satisfying than discovering the perfect word you were searching for – like locating the lost component that snaps the picture into position.

At a time when our gadgets drain our focus with relentless efficiency, it feels rebellious to use mine as a tool for slow thinking. And it has given me back something I feared I’d lost – the joy of exercising a intellect that, after years of lazy browsing, is finally stirring again.