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When I was a child, I devoured books until my eyes grew hazy. Once my GCSEs came around, I demonstrated the endurance of a monk, studying for lengthy periods without a break. But in lately, I’ve observed that ability for intense focus fade into endless scrolling on my phone. My focus now shrinks like a snail at the touch of a thumb. Reading for pleasure seems less like nourishment and more like a marathon. And for someone who creates content for a living, this is a occupational risk as well as something that made me sad. I wanted to regain that cognitive flexibility, to stop the brain rot.

So, about a twelve months back, I made a modest promise: every time I came across a word I didn’t understand – whether in a book, an article, or an casual discussion – I would research it and record it. Nothing fancy, no leather-bound journal or fountain pen. Just a running list kept, ironically, on my phone. Each seven days, I’d spend a few minutes reading the collection back in an effort to imprint the vocabulary into my recall.

The list now spans almost 20 pages, and this small ritual has been subtly life-changing. The benefit is less about showing off with obscure adjectives – which, to be honest, can make you sound unbearable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the practice. Each time I search for and note a term, I feel a slight expansion, as though some underused part of my brain is flexing again. Even if I never deploy “phantom” in conversation, the very process of spotting, documenting and revising it breaks the drift into passive, semi-skimmed attention.

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

It's not as if it’s an easy habit to keep up. It is often extremely inconvenient. If I’m reading on the subway, I have to stop mid-paragraph, pull out my device and enter “millenarianism” into my digital document while trying not to elbow the person squeezed against me. It can slow my pace to a frustrating crawl. (The e-reader, with its integrated lexicon, is much kinder). And then there’s the revising (which I frequently forget to do), conscientiously scrolling through my expanding vocabulary collection like I’m preparing for a vocabulary test.

In practice, I integrate maybe 5% of these terms into my everyday conversation. “unreformable” was adopted. “Lugubrious” too. But the majority of them remain like museum pieces – appreciated and catalogued but rarely used.

Still, it’s rendered my thinking much keener. I notice I'm reaching less often for the same overused selection of descriptors, and more frequently for something precise and strong. Rarely are more satisfying than unearthing the perfect word you were seeking – like finding the missing puzzle piece that snaps the image into position.

At a time when our devices drain our focus with merciless efficiency, it feels subversive to use my own as a tool for slow thought. And it has restored to me something I feared I’d forfeited – the joy of exercising a mind that, after a long time of slack scrolling, is at last stirring again.