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When I was a child, I consumed books until my vision blurred. Once my exams arrived, I exercised the stamina of a monk, studying for hours without a break. But in recent years, I’ve watched that capacity for intense concentration fade into endless scrolling on my phone. My attention span now shrinks like a snail at the touch of a finger. Reading for enjoyment seems less like nourishment and more like a marathon. And for a person who creates content for a profession, this is a professional hazard as well as something that made me sad. I aimed to regain that cognitive flexibility, to halt the mental decline.

So, about a year ago, I made a modest promise: every time I came across a word I didn’t understand – whether in a book, an piece, or an casual discussion – I would research it and record it. Not a thing elaborate, no leather-bound journal or fountain pen. Just a running list kept, ironically, on my smartphone. Each seven days, I’d spend a few moments reading the list back in an attempt to imprint the vocabulary into my memory.

The list now spans almost 20 pages, and this small ritual has been subtly life-changing. The payoff is less about peacocking with obscure adjectives – which, to be honest, can make you sound unbearable – and more about the cognitive exercise of the practice. Each time I search for and note a word, I feel a faint stretch, as though some underused part of my brain is flexing again. Even if I never use “eidolon” in dialogue, the very act of spotting, documenting and reviewing it interrupts the drift into inactive, superficial focus.

There is also a diary-keeping element to it – it acts as something of a diary, a record 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 simple habit to maintain. It is frequently extremely inconvenient. If I’m reading on the subway, I have to pause mid-paragraph, pull out my phone and enter “millennialism” into my Google doc while trying not to bump the person pressed against me. It can slow my reading to a maddening crawl. (The Kindle, with its built-in lexicon, is much easier). And then there’s the revising (which I often neglect to do), dutifully browsing through my expanding word-hoard like I’m preparing for a vocabulary test.

In practice, I incorporate perhaps 5% of these words into my daily speech. “Incorrigible” was adopted. “mournful” too. But the majority of them remain like exhibits – admired and listed but rarely used.

Nevertheless, it’s made my mind much sharper. I notice I'm turning less frequently for the same tired selection of adjectives, and more frequently for something exact and strong. Rarely are more gratifying than discovering the exact word you were searching for – like finding the missing component that snaps the image into place.

At a time when our devices siphon off our attention with merciless efficiency, it feels subversive to use mine as a instrument for deliberate thinking. And it has restored to me something I feared I’d forfeited – the joy of exercising a intellect that, after a long time of slack scrolling, is finally waking up again.