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As a youngster, I devoured books until my eyes grew hazy. When my GCSEs came around, I exercised the endurance of a ascetic, revising for hours without pause. But in recent years, I’ve observed that ability for deep concentration dissolve into infinite browsing on my phone. My attention span now shrinks like a slug at the tap of a thumb. Engaging with books for pleasure feels less like nourishment and more like a marathon. And for someone who writes for a profession, 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.

So, about a year ago, I made a small promise: every time I encountered a word I didn’t know – whether in a novel, an article, or an casual discussion – I would research it and record it. Nothing fancy, no leather-bound journal or stylish pen. Just a running list maintained, amusingly, on my phone. Each seven days, I’d spend a few minutes reviewing the collection back in an attempt to imprint the word into my memory.

The list now covers almost twenty sheets, and this small ritual has been subtly life-changing. The payoff is less about showing off with obscure adjectives – which, to be honest, can make you sound insufferable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the ritual. Each time I look up and note a word, I feel a faint expansion, as though some neglected part of my mind is stirring again. Even if I never use “eidolon” in conversation, the very process of spotting, logging and reviewing it interrupts the drift into inactive, semi-skimmed focus.

There is also a diary-keeping element to it – it acts as something of a diary, a log of where I’ve been engaging, what I’ve been pondering and who I’ve been hearing.

Not that it’s an easy habit to keep up. It is frequently very impractical. If I’m engaged on the tube, I have to pause in the middle, take out my phone and type “millennialism” into my Google doc while trying not to elbow the person pressed against me. It can slow my pace to a frustrating crawl. (The e-reader, with its built-in dictionary, is much kinder). And then there’s the revising (which I frequently neglect to do), dutifully browsing through my growing vocabulary collection like I’m preparing for a word test.

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

Nevertheless, it’s rendered my thinking much sharper. I find myself turning less frequently for the same overused handful of descriptors, and more often for something precise and strong. Rarely are more gratifying than unearthing the perfect term you were seeking – like locating the missing puzzle piece that locks the picture into position.

In an era when our gadgets drain our focus with relentless effectiveness, it feels rebellious to use my own as a tool for deliberate thought. And it has restored to me something I feared I’d forfeited – the joy of exercising a intellect that, after a long time of lazy browsing, is finally stirring again.