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As a youngster, I devoured books until my vision grew hazy. When my GCSEs arrived, I demonstrated the endurance of a ascetic, revising for lengthy periods without pause. But in lately, I’ve watched that capacity for intense concentration dissolve into infinite browsing on my device. My focus now contracts like a slug at the tap of a finger. Engaging with books for enjoyment seems less like nourishment and more like a marathon. And for someone who creates content for a profession, this is a professional hazard as well as something that made me sad. I wanted to regain that cognitive flexibility, to halt the brain rot.

So, about a year ago, I made a modest promise: every time I encountered a word I didn’t know – whether in a book, an article, or an casual conversation – I would look it up and write it down. Not a thing elaborate, no elegant notebook or stylish pen. Just a ongoing record maintained, amusingly, on my smartphone. Each week, I’d spend a few moments reviewing the collection back in an attempt to lodge the vocabulary into my memory.

The record now spans almost twenty sheets, and this tiny habit has been subtly life-changing. The payoff is less about peacocking with uncommon descriptors – which, to be honest, can make you appear insufferable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the practice. Each time I search for and note a word, 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 act of spotting, documenting and reviewing it interrupts the slide into passive, superficial attention.

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

Not that it’s an simple habit to maintain. It is frequently very impractical. If I’m reading on the subway, I have to pause in the middle, take out my device and enter “millenarianism” into my digital document while trying not to bump the person squeezed against me. It can reduce my pace to a frustrating crawl. (The Kindle, with its integrated lexicon, is much kinder). And then there’s the revising (which I frequently neglect to do), conscientiously browsing through my growing vocabulary collection like I’m preparing for a vocabulary test.

Realistically, I incorporate perhaps five percent of these terms into my everyday speech. “Incorrigible” made the cut. “Lugubrious” as well. But most of them stay like museum pieces – admired and listed but rarely used.

Still, it’s made my thinking much keener. I notice I'm turning less often for the same tired handful of descriptors, and more frequently for something precise and muscular. Few things are more satisfying than unearthing the perfect word you were seeking – like finding the lost puzzle piece that snaps the picture into position.

In an era when our gadgets drain our attention with merciless effectiveness, it feels subversive to use my own as a tool for slow thinking. And it has given me back something I feared I’d forfeited – the pleasure of engaging a intellect that, after years of lazy browsing, is finally stirring again.