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When I was a youngster, I devoured novels until my eyes grew hazy. When my GCSEs came around, I exercised the stamina of a monk, revising for hours without pause. But in recent years, I’ve observed that ability for intense concentration dissolve into endless browsing on my phone. My attention span now shrinks like a slug at the touch of a finger. Reading for enjoyment feels less like nourishment and more like endurance training. And for someone who creates content for a living, this is a professional hazard as well as something that left me disheartened. I wanted to regain that cognitive flexibility, to halt the brain rot.

So, about a year ago, I made a small promise: every time I came across a term I didn’t understand – whether in a novel, an piece, or an overheard discussion – I would look it up and record it. Not a thing fancy, no leather-bound journal or stylish pen. Just a ongoing record kept, ironically, on my phone. Each week, I’d spend a few moments reviewing the list back in an attempt to imprint the vocabulary into my memory.

The list now covers almost twenty sheets, and this small habit has been subtly transformative. The benefit is less about showing off with obscure descriptors – which, let’s face it, can make you sound unbearable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the practice. Each time I look up and note a word, I feel a slight expansion, as though some underused part of my brain is flexing again. Even if I never use “phantom” in dialogue, the very act of noticing, documenting and reviewing it interrupts the drift into passive, semi-skimmed focus.

Additionally, there's a diary-keeping element to it – it functions as something of a diary, a record 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 easy routine to maintain. It is frequently very impractical. If I’m reading on the tube, I have to stop in the middle, pull out my device and enter “millennialism” into my Google doc while trying not to bump the person squeezed against me. It can slow my reading to a maddening crawl. (The e-reader, with its integrated dictionary, is much kinder). And then there’s the revising (which I frequently forget to do), dutifully browsing through my expanding word-hoard like I’m preparing for a word test.

In practice, I integrate maybe 5% of these terms into my daily speech. “unreformable” made the cut. “Lugubrious” as well. But most of them stay like exhibits – admired and catalogued but seldom used.

Still, it’s rendered my thinking much sharper. I notice I'm reaching less frequently for the same overused handful of descriptors, and more frequently for something exact and muscular. Few things are more gratifying than discovering the exact word you were searching for – like locating the lost puzzle piece that snaps the image into place.

At a time when our devices drain our attention with merciless effectiveness, it feels rebellious to use mine as a instrument for deliberate thought. And it has given me back something I worried I’d forfeited – the joy of engaging a intellect that, after years of lazy scrolling, is at last stirring again.