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As a child, I consumed novels until my vision grew hazy. Once my GCSEs arrived, I demonstrated the stamina of a ascetic, revising for lengthy periods without a break. But in recent years, I’ve watched that ability for intense focus dissolve into infinite browsing on my device. My attention span now shrinks like a snail at the touch of a thumb. Engaging with books for enjoyment seems less like nourishment and more like a marathon. And for a person who creates content for a living, this is a occupational risk as well as something that made me sad. I wanted to regain that mental elasticity, to stop the mental decline.

Therefore, about a year ago, I made a modest promise: every time I encountered a term I didn’t understand – whether in a book, an article, or an casual discussion – I would look it up and record it. Nothing elaborate, no elegant notebook or stylish pen. Just a ongoing record maintained, amusingly, on my phone. Each week, I’d devote a few minutes reading the list back in an attempt to lodge the word into my memory.

The record now spans almost twenty sheets, and this small ritual has been subtly transformative. The payoff is less about showing off with obscure descriptors – 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 word, I feel a slight expansion, as though some neglected part of my mind is flexing again. Even if I never deploy “phantom” in conversation, the very process of spotting, logging and revising it interrupts the drift into passive, semi-skimmed attention.

There is also a journalling element to it – it acts as something of a journal, a record of where I’ve been engaging, what I’ve been thinking about and who I’ve been hearing.

Not that it’s an easy habit to keep up. It is often very impractical. If I’m engaged on the tube, I have to stop mid-paragraph, pull out my device and enter “millenarianism” into my Google doc while trying not to elbow the stranger squeezed against me. It can slow my pace to a maddening crawl. (The e-reader, with its built-in dictionary, is much kinder). And then there’s the reviewing (which I frequently forget to do), conscientiously browsing through my growing word-hoard like I’m preparing for a word test.

In practice, I incorporate maybe five percent of these terms into my everyday conversation. “Incorrigible” made the cut. “Lugubrious” too. But the majority of them stay like museum pieces – admired and catalogued but rarely handled.

Nevertheless, it’s made my thinking much sharper. I notice I'm reaching less frequently for the same tired selection of descriptors, and more often for something exact and strong. Few things are more gratifying than unearthing the perfect word you were searching for – like finding the lost puzzle piece that locks the picture into place.

In an era when our gadgets siphon off our focus with relentless effectiveness, it feels rebellious to use mine as a instrument for deliberate thought. And it has restored to me something I feared I’d forfeited – the pleasure of exercising a intellect that, after years of lazy scrolling, is at last stirring again.