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When I was a child, I devoured books until my vision grew hazy. When my GCSEs arrived, I demonstrated the stamina of a ascetic, revising for lengthy periods without pause. But in lately, I’ve watched that ability for intense concentration fade into infinite browsing on my device. My focus now contracts like a slug at the touch of a thumb. Engaging with books for pleasure feels less like nourishment and more like endurance training. And for someone who writes for a profession, this is a professional hazard as well as something that left me disheartened. I aimed to regain that mental elasticity, to halt the mental decline.

So, about a twelve months back, I made a small vow: every time I encountered 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, amusingly, on my smartphone. Each seven days, I’d devote a few minutes reading the collection back in an effort to imprint the word into my memory.

The record now spans almost 20 pages, and this small ritual has been subtly life-changing. The payoff is less about showing off with uncommon descriptors – which, to be honest, can make you sound unbearable – and more about the cognitive exercise of the ritual. Each time I look up and note a word, I feel a slight stretch, as though some underused part of my mind is stirring again. Even if I never use “eidolon” in dialogue, the very process of spotting, logging and revising it breaks the drift into inactive, semi-skimmed attention.

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 thinking about and who I’ve been hearing.

It's not as if it’s an simple routine to keep up. It is often very inconvenient. If I’m engaged on the subway, I have to stop mid-paragraph, take out my phone and enter “millennialism” into my Google doc while trying not to elbow the person pressed against me. It can reduce my pace to a frustrating crawl. (The Kindle, with its integrated lexicon, is much easier). And then there’s the revising (which I often forget to do), dutifully scrolling through my expanding word-hoard like I’m preparing for a vocabulary test.

In practice, I integrate perhaps five percent of these terms into my daily conversation. “unreformable” made the cut. “Lugubrious” as well. But most of them stay like exhibits – admired and listed but rarely handled.

Still, it’s rendered my thinking much keener. I find myself turning less often for the same tired selection of adjectives, and more frequently for something exact and muscular. Rarely are more satisfying than unearthing the exact word you were searching for – like locating the lost puzzle piece that snaps the picture into position.

At a time when our gadgets drain our focus with merciless effectiveness, it feels rebellious to use mine as a tool for deliberate thought. 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 at last stirring again.