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As a youngster, I devoured books until my vision blurred. Once my exams came around, I exercised the stamina of a monk, studying for lengthy periods without pause. But in lately, I’ve watched that ability for intense focus fade into infinite scrolling on my phone. My focus now contracts like a slug at the touch of a finger. Reading for enjoyment seems less like sustenance and more like a marathon. And for a person who writes for a profession, this is a occupational risk as well as something that left me disheartened. I aimed to regain that cognitive flexibility, to stop the mental decline.

Therefore, about a year ago, I made a modest promise: every time I came across a term I didn’t know – whether in a book, an piece, or an overheard conversation – I would research it and record it. Not a thing elaborate, no leather-bound journal or fountain pen. Just a ongoing record kept, amusingly, on my phone. Each week, I’d spend a few minutes reading the collection back in an attempt to lodge the word into my memory.

The record now covers almost 20 pages, and this tiny habit has been subtly transformative. The payoff is less about peacocking with uncommon descriptors – which, to be honest, 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 faint expansion, as though some neglected part of my brain is flexing again. Even if I never deploy “phantom” in dialogue, the very process of spotting, documenting and reviewing it breaks the drift into passive, superficial focus.

Additionally, there's 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.

It's not as if it’s an simple habit to maintain. It is frequently very impractical. If I’m reading on the tube, I have to stop mid-paragraph, pull out my phone and enter “millennialism” into my digital document while trying not to bump the person squeezed against me. It can slow my pace to a maddening crawl. (The Kindle, with its built-in lexicon, is much kinder). And then there’s the revising (which I frequently neglect to do), dutifully scrolling through my expanding word-hoard like I’m studying for a vocabulary test.

Realistically, I incorporate maybe five percent of these words into my everyday speech. “unreformable” was adopted. “mournful” too. But the majority of them stay like exhibits – admired and catalogued but seldom handled.

Still, it’s rendered my mind much keener. I notice I'm turning less frequently for the same tired selection of descriptors, and more frequently for something exact and muscular. Few things are more gratifying than unearthing the exact term you were searching for – like locating the lost puzzle piece that locks the picture into place.

At a time when our devices siphon off our focus with relentless efficiency, it feels rebellious to use mine as a instrument for slow thinking. And it has given me back something I feared I’d forfeited – the joy of engaging a mind that, after years of lazy browsing, is at last waking up again.