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When I was a child, I consumed novels until my vision blurred. Once my exams came around, I demonstrated the endurance of a monk, revising for hours without pause. But in lately, I’ve watched that capacity for intense concentration fade into endless browsing on my device. My focus now contracts like a snail at the tap of a finger. Reading for pleasure feels less like nourishment and more like a marathon. And for a person who writes for a profession, this is a professional hazard as well as something that left me disheartened. I aimed to restore that cognitive flexibility, to stop the mental decline.

Therefore, about a twelve months back, I made a modest vow: every time I encountered a word I didn’t know – whether in a novel, an article, or an overheard discussion – I would research it and record it. Not a thing fancy, no elegant notebook or fountain pen. Just a ongoing record kept, amusingly, on my smartphone. Each week, I’d spend a few moments reviewing the list back in an attempt to lodge the word into my recall.

The record now spans almost twenty sheets, and this tiny habit has been subtly life-changing. The benefit is less about showing off with uncommon descriptors – which, let’s face it, can make you appear unbearable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the ritual. Each time I look up and record a word, I feel a slight stretch, as though some neglected part of my mind is flexing again. Even if I never use “phantom” in dialogue, the very process of spotting, documenting and revising it interrupts the drift into inactive, semi-skimmed focus.

Additionally, there's a journalling aspect to it – it functions as something of a diary, a record of where I’ve been reading, what I’ve been pondering and who I’ve been listening to.

Not that it’s an simple routine to maintain. It is often very inconvenient. If I’m reading on the tube, I have to stop mid-paragraph, pull out my device and enter “millennialism” into my digital document while trying not to elbow the person squeezed against me. It can slow my reading to a frustrating speed. (The e-reader, with its built-in dictionary, is much easier). And then there’s the reviewing (which I frequently neglect to do), conscientiously scrolling 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 daily conversation. “Incorrigible” made the cut. “mournful” as well. But the majority of them remain like museum pieces – admired and listed but rarely handled.

Still, it’s made my mind much keener. I find myself reaching less often for the same overused handful of descriptors, and more frequently for something precise and muscular. Rarely are more gratifying than discovering the perfect word you were searching for – like locating the missing component that snaps the image into position.

In an era when our gadgets drain our attention with relentless effectiveness, it feels rebellious to use mine as a tool for deliberate thought. And it has restored to me something I feared I’d forfeited – the joy of exercising a mind that, after years of lazy browsing, is finally waking up again.