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When I was a child, I devoured novels until my vision grew hazy. When my exams arrived, I demonstrated the endurance of a ascetic, revising for hours without pause. But in recent years, I’ve observed that capacity for intense focus dissolve into infinite browsing on my phone. My focus now shrinks like a slug at the tap of a finger. Reading for pleasure seems less like nourishment and more like a marathon. And for someone who writes for a living, this is a professional hazard as well as something that left me disheartened. I wanted to regain that mental elasticity, to halt the brain rot.

So, about a twelve months back, I made a modest vow: every time I encountered a term I didn’t know – whether in a novel, an piece, or an casual discussion – I would look it up and record it. Nothing fancy, no leather-bound journal or fountain pen. Just a running list kept, ironically, on my smartphone. Each seven days, I’d devote a few minutes reviewing the list back in an effort to imprint the vocabulary into my memory.

The record now spans almost 20 pages, and this tiny ritual has been subtly transformative. The benefit is less about showing off with uncommon descriptors – which, to be honest, can make you appear insufferable – and more about the cognitive exercise of the ritual. Each time I search for and note a term, I feel a faint expansion, as though some neglected part of my brain is flexing again. Even if I never use “eidolon” in conversation, the very act of noticing, documenting and revising it interrupts the slide into passive, semi-skimmed attention.

Additionally, there's a journalling element to it – it functions as something of a journal, a record of where I’ve been reading, what I’ve been thinking about and who I’ve been hearing.

Not that it’s an easy routine to maintain. It is often extremely inconvenient. If I’m engaged on the tube, I have to stop in the middle, take out my device and type “millenarianism” into my Google doc while trying not to bump the stranger pressed against me. It can reduce my reading to a maddening speed. (The Kindle, with its built-in lexicon, is much kinder). And then there’s the reviewing (which I frequently neglect to do), conscientiously browsing through my expanding word-hoard like I’m preparing for a word test.

Realistically, I integrate perhaps 5% of these words into my everyday conversation. “Incorrigible” made the cut. “Lugubrious” as well. But the majority of them stay like museum pieces – admired and listed but rarely handled.

Nevertheless, it’s rendered my mind much sharper. I find myself turning less frequently for the same overused handful of adjectives, and more frequently for something exact and muscular. Few things are more satisfying than unearthing the perfect word you were seeking – like locating the missing puzzle piece that locks the picture into position.

In an era when our devices drain our attention with merciless efficiency, it feels rebellious to use mine as a instrument for deliberate thinking. And it has given me back something I feared I’d forfeited – the pleasure of exercising a intellect that, after years of lazy browsing, is finally stirring again.