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When I was a child, I consumed novels until my vision grew hazy. When my exams came around, I demonstrated the stamina of a monk, studying for lengthy periods without pause. But in recent years, I’ve watched that ability for deep concentration fade into endless browsing on my device. My focus now contracts like a slug at the tap of a thumb. Engaging with books for pleasure seems less like nourishment and more like endurance training. And for someone 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 halt the mental decline.

Therefore, about a twelve months back, I made a modest vow: every time I came across a word I didn’t know – whether in a book, an article, or an casual discussion – I would look it up and write it down. Nothing fancy, no elegant notebook or fountain pen. Just a ongoing record maintained, ironically, on my phone. Each seven days, I’d spend a few minutes reviewing the collection back in an effort to lodge the word into my memory.

The record now covers almost twenty sheets, and this tiny habit has been quietly transformative. The benefit is less about peacocking with obscure adjectives – which, let’s face it, can make you sound insufferable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the practice. Each time I look up and note a term, I feel a faint stretch, as though some neglected part of my mind is stirring again. Even if I never deploy “eidolon” in dialogue, the very act of noticing, logging and revising it interrupts the drift into passive, semi-skimmed attention.

Additionally, there's a journalling element to it – it acts as something of a journal, a log of where I’ve been reading, what I’ve been thinking about and who I’ve been listening to.

Not that it’s an simple routine to keep up. It is frequently extremely impractical. If I’m engaged on the tube, I have to pause mid-paragraph, pull out my device and enter “millennialism” into my Google doc while trying not to elbow the person squeezed against me. It can slow my reading to a frustrating speed. (The Kindle, with its built-in lexicon, is much kinder). And then there’s the reviewing (which I often forget to do), dutifully scrolling through my growing word-hoard like I’m studying for a vocabulary test.

In practice, I incorporate maybe five percent of these words into my everyday conversation. “Incorrigible” was adopted. “Lugubrious” too. But the majority of them remain like museum pieces – admired and catalogued but seldom handled.

Nevertheless, it’s rendered my thinking much sharper. I notice I'm reaching less often for the same tired handful of descriptors, and more often for something precise and muscular. Rarely are more gratifying than unearthing the exact word you were seeking – like locating the lost puzzle piece that locks the picture into place.

In an era when our gadgets drain our attention with relentless efficiency, it feels subversive to use mine as a instrument for slow thinking. And it has restored to me something I worried I’d forfeited – the pleasure of engaging a intellect that, after a long time of lazy browsing, is finally stirring again.