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When I was a youngster, I consumed books until my vision grew hazy. Once my exams came around, I demonstrated the stamina of a monk, revising for lengthy periods without a break. But in recent years, I’ve observed that capacity for deep concentration fade into endless browsing on my device. My attention span now contracts like a slug at the tap of a thumb. Engaging with books for enjoyment seems less like nourishment and more like endurance training. And for a person who creates content for a profession, this is a occupational risk as well as something that left me disheartened. I aimed to regain that mental elasticity, to halt the mental decline.

So, about a year ago, I made a modest promise: every time I encountered a term I didn’t understand – whether in a novel, an piece, or an overheard discussion – I would look it up and write it down. Not a thing elaborate, no elegant notebook or stylish pen. Just a ongoing record maintained, ironically, on my smartphone. Each seven days, I’d spend a few moments reading the collection back in an effort to imprint the vocabulary into my memory.

The list now covers almost 20 pages, and this small ritual has been quietly transformative. The benefit is less about showing off with obscure adjectives – which, let’s face it, can make you sound insufferable – and more about the cognitive exercise of the practice. Each time I search for and record a word, I feel a slight expansion, as though some underused part of my mind is stirring again. Even if I never use “phantom” in conversation, the very act of spotting, documenting and revising it breaks the slide into inactive, superficial focus.

There is also a diary-keeping aspect to it – it functions 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 simple routine to maintain. It is often very impractical. If I’m reading on the subway, I have to pause in the middle, take out my phone and type “millenarianism” into my digital document while trying not to elbow the stranger pressed against me. It can slow my pace to a maddening crawl. (The Kindle, with its integrated dictionary, is much kinder). And then there’s the revising (which I often forget to do), dutifully scrolling through my growing vocabulary collection like I’m preparing for a vocabulary test.

Realistically, I incorporate maybe five percent of these words into my everyday conversation. “unreformable” made the cut. “mournful” too. But the majority of them stay like exhibits – admired and catalogued but rarely used.

Still, it’s rendered my mind much sharper. I find myself reaching less frequently for the same tired selection of descriptors, and more frequently for something precise and muscular. Few things are more satisfying than discovering the exact word you were searching for – like finding the missing puzzle piece that locks the image into place.

At a time when our devices siphon off our focus with merciless efficiency, it feels subversive to use mine as a tool for deliberate thought. And it has given me back something I worried I’d forfeited – the joy of engaging a intellect that, after years of lazy scrolling, is finally waking up again.