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As a child, I consumed novels until my eyes blurred. Once my exams arrived, I exercised the stamina of a monk, revising for hours without a break. But in lately, I’ve watched that capacity for intense focus dissolve into endless browsing on my phone. My attention span now contracts like a slug at the tap of a finger. Engaging with books for enjoyment feels less like nourishment and more like a marathon. And for someone who writes for a living, this is a professional hazard as well as something that made me sad. I aimed to regain that mental elasticity, to halt the brain rot.

Therefore, about a twelve months back, I made a small promise: every time I encountered a term I didn’t understand – whether in a book, an article, or an overheard discussion – I would research it and write it down. Nothing fancy, no elegant notebook or fountain pen. Just a ongoing record kept, amusingly, on my smartphone. Each seven days, I’d spend a few moments reading the collection back in an effort to lodge the vocabulary into my memory.

The record now spans almost twenty sheets, and this tiny habit has been quietly transformative. 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 look up and record a term, I feel a faint expansion, as though some underused part of my brain is flexing again. Even if I never use “eidolon” in conversation, the very act of noticing, logging and reviewing it breaks the drift into inactive, semi-skimmed focus.

There is also 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 thinking about and who I’ve been listening to.

Not that it’s an easy routine to keep up. It is often extremely impractical. If I’m reading on the tube, I have to pause in the middle, pull out my device and enter “millennialism” into my digital document while trying not to bump the person pressed against me. It can slow my pace to a maddening speed. (The e-reader, with its integrated lexicon, is much easier). And then there’s the revising (which I frequently neglect to do), conscientiously browsing through my growing word-hoard like I’m preparing for a vocabulary test.

In practice, I integrate maybe five percent of these terms into my everyday speech. “unreformable” was adopted. “Lugubrious” too. But most of them remain like exhibits – appreciated and catalogued but rarely handled.

Still, it’s rendered my mind much sharper. I find myself reaching less frequently for the same tired selection of descriptors, and more frequently for something exact and strong. Rarely are more satisfying than unearthing the exact word you were seeking – like locating the missing component that locks the image into position.

At a time when our devices drain our focus with merciless efficiency, it feels subversive to use my own as a instrument for deliberate thinking. And it has restored to me something I feared I’d forfeited – the pleasure of exercising a mind that, after a long time of slack browsing, is at last stirring again.