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When I was a youngster, I devoured books until my vision grew hazy. When my GCSEs came around, I demonstrated the endurance of a monk, revising for lengthy periods without pause. But in recent years, I’ve observed that ability for intense focus fade into infinite browsing on my device. My focus now shrinks like a slug at the tap of a finger. Reading for enjoyment seems less like sustenance and more like endurance training. And for a person who writes for a profession, 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 came across a term I didn’t understand – whether in a book, an piece, or an overheard conversation – I would look it up and record it. Nothing elaborate, no elegant notebook or stylish pen. Just a ongoing record kept, ironically, on my phone. Each week, I’d devote a few minutes reviewing the list back in an attempt to lodge the vocabulary into my memory.

The list now spans almost 20 pages, and this tiny habit has been quietly transformative. The benefit is less about peacocking with uncommon adjectives – which, to be honest, can make you appear unbearable – and more about the cognitive exercise of the ritual. Each time I look up and note a term, I feel a slight expansion, as though some underused part of my mind is stirring again. Even if I never deploy “eidolon” in conversation, the very process of spotting, logging and reviewing it interrupts the slide into passive, superficial focus.

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 often very impractical. If I’m engaged on the subway, I have to pause mid-paragraph, take out my phone and enter “millenarianism” into my digital document while trying not to bump the person pressed against me. It can slow my reading to a maddening speed. (The Kindle, with its integrated dictionary, is much easier). And then there’s the reviewing (which I often neglect to do), conscientiously scrolling through my expanding vocabulary collection like I’m preparing for a vocabulary test.

Realistically, I integrate perhaps 5% of these words into my daily speech. “unreformable” made the cut. “mournful” as well. But the majority of them remain like museum pieces – appreciated and listed but seldom handled.

Nevertheless, it’s rendered my thinking much keener. I notice I'm turning less frequently for the same overused selection of adjectives, and more often for something exact and muscular. Few things are more gratifying than unearthing the perfect term you were searching for – like finding the lost component that snaps the image into place.

In an era when our devices siphon off our focus with merciless efficiency, it feels subversive to use mine as a instrument for deliberate thought. And it has restored to me something I worried I’d forfeited – the pleasure of engaging a intellect that, after a long time of lazy scrolling, is at last stirring again.