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When I was a child, I devoured books until my vision blurred. Once my exams arrived, I exercised the stamina of a monk, studying for hours without pause. But in lately, I’ve observed that ability for deep concentration fade into endless browsing on my phone. My attention span now shrinks like a slug at the tap of a thumb. Reading for enjoyment feels less like sustenance and more like endurance training. And for a person who creates content for a living, this is a professional hazard as well as something that made me sad. I aimed to regain that cognitive flexibility, to stop the mental decline.

So, about a twelve months back, I made a modest vow: every time I encountered a word I didn’t understand – whether in a book, an piece, or an casual conversation – I would look it up and write it down. Not a thing elaborate, no elegant notebook or stylish pen. Just a ongoing record maintained, amusingly, on my phone. Each week, I’d devote a few moments reading the list back in an effort to imprint the word into my memory.

The list now spans almost twenty sheets, and this small habit has been quietly life-changing. The benefit is less about showing off with uncommon descriptors – which, to be honest, can make you sound insufferable – and more about the cognitive exercise of the practice. Each time I search for and record a term, I feel a slight expansion, as though some neglected part of my brain is flexing again. Even if I never use “eidolon” in dialogue, the very act of spotting, logging and revising it breaks the slide into passive, superficial focus.

Additionally, there's a diary-keeping element to it – it functions as something of a journal, a log of where I’ve been engaging, what I’ve been thinking about and who I’ve been listening to.

It's not as if it’s an easy routine to keep up. It is frequently extremely impractical. 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 bump the stranger squeezed against me. It can slow my reading to a maddening crawl. (The Kindle, with its built-in lexicon, is much kinder). And then there’s the revising (which I often neglect to do), conscientiously scrolling through my expanding vocabulary collection like I’m preparing for a word test.

Realistically, I integrate perhaps 5% of these terms into my everyday speech. “Incorrigible” made the cut. “mournful” as well. But the majority of them remain like museum pieces – admired and catalogued but seldom used.

Nevertheless, it’s made my thinking much keener. I find myself turning less often for the same overused handful of descriptors, and more frequently for something precise and strong. Rarely are more satisfying than unearthing the perfect term you were searching for – like finding the lost component that snaps the picture into place.

At a time when our devices siphon off our focus with merciless effectiveness, it feels rebellious to use mine as a instrument for slow thinking. And it has restored to me something I worried I’d lost – the joy of engaging a intellect that, after a long time of lazy scrolling, is finally stirring again.