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As a child, I devoured novels until my eyes blurred. Once my GCSEs came around, I demonstrated the stamina of a monk, studying for hours without a break. But in lately, I’ve observed that capacity for intense concentration fade into endless scrolling on my device. My focus now contracts like a snail at the tap of a thumb. Engaging with books for pleasure seems less like sustenance and more like a marathon. And for someone who writes for a living, this is a professional hazard as well as something that made me sad. I wanted to restore that cognitive flexibility, to halt the brain rot.

Therefore, about a year ago, I made a modest vow: every time I encountered a word I didn’t understand – whether in a book, an article, or an casual discussion – I would look it up and write it down. Not a thing elaborate, no leather-bound journal or fountain pen. Just a ongoing record maintained, amusingly, on my phone. Each seven days, I’d devote a few moments reviewing the collection back in an effort to lodge the word into my recall.

The record now spans almost 20 pages, and this small habit has been quietly life-changing. The payoff is less about peacocking with obscure descriptors – which, let’s face it, can make you appear unbearable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the ritual. Each time I search for and record a word, I feel a slight stretch, as though some underused part of my brain is stirring again. Even if I never deploy “phantom” in dialogue, the very process of noticing, logging and revising it interrupts the drift into passive, superficial focus.

Additionally, there's a diary-keeping aspect to it – it functions as something of a journal, a record of where I’ve been reading, what I’ve been pondering and who I’ve been hearing.

Not that it’s an simple habit to keep up. It is frequently extremely impractical. If I’m engaged on the subway, I have to stop in the middle, pull out my device and type “millenarianism” into my Google doc while trying not to elbow the person pressed against me. It can slow my reading to a frustrating speed. (The Kindle, with its built-in dictionary, is much easier). And then there’s the reviewing (which I often forget to do), dutifully scrolling through my expanding vocabulary collection like I’m preparing for a vocabulary test.

In practice, I incorporate perhaps 5% of these words into my everyday speech. “Incorrigible” made the cut. “Lugubrious” too. But the majority of them remain like museum pieces – appreciated and catalogued but seldom used.

Still, it’s rendered my thinking much sharper. I find myself turning less frequently for the same tired handful of adjectives, and more often for something precise and strong. Rarely are more satisfying than unearthing the exact word you were seeking – like finding the lost component that snaps the image into position.

In an era when our gadgets drain our focus with merciless effectiveness, it feels rebellious to use my own as a tool for slow thought. And it has restored to me something I worried I’d lost – the pleasure of engaging a intellect that, after a long time of lazy browsing, is finally stirring again.