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When I was a youngster, I consumed novels until my vision blurred. Once my GCSEs arrived, I exercised the endurance of a ascetic, studying for hours without pause. But in lately, I’ve observed that ability for intense focus dissolve into endless browsing on my phone. My attention span now contracts like a slug at the touch of a finger. Engaging with books for enjoyment feels less like nourishment and more like a marathon. And for someone who creates content for a living, 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.

So, about a year ago, I made a modest promise: every time I encountered a term I didn’t know – whether in a book, an article, or an overheard discussion – I would research it and record it. Nothing elaborate, no leather-bound journal or stylish pen. Just a running list maintained, amusingly, on my phone. Each week, I’d spend a few moments reviewing the list back in an attempt to imprint the vocabulary into my recall.

The list now covers almost 20 pages, and this small ritual has been subtly transformative. The benefit is less about showing off with uncommon adjectives – which, let’s face it, can make you appear unbearable – and more about the cognitive exercise of the practice. Each time I look up and note a term, I feel a slight expansion, as though some neglected part of my mind is stirring again. Even if I never use “eidolon” in dialogue, the very process of spotting, documenting and reviewing it breaks the drift into passive, semi-skimmed 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 hearing.

It's not as if it’s an simple routine to maintain. It is frequently very inconvenient. If I’m reading on the tube, I have to stop mid-paragraph, pull out my phone and enter “millenarianism” into my Google doc while trying not to elbow the person pressed against me. It can slow my reading to a frustrating crawl. (The Kindle, with its integrated lexicon, is much easier). And then there’s the reviewing (which I frequently forget to do), conscientiously scrolling through my growing vocabulary collection like I’m preparing for a word test.

Realistically, I integrate perhaps five percent of these terms into my everyday speech. “unreformable” made the cut. “Lugubrious” as well. But most of them stay like museum pieces – admired and listed but seldom handled.

Still, it’s rendered my thinking much sharper. I find myself turning less often for the same tired handful of descriptors, and more frequently for something precise and strong. Few things are more gratifying than discovering the exact term you were searching for – like finding the missing puzzle piece that locks the image into place.

In an era when our gadgets siphon off 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 worried I’d lost – the joy of exercising a mind that, after a long time of slack browsing, is at last stirring again.