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As a child, I consumed books until my vision grew hazy. Once my exams came around, I exercised the endurance of a ascetic, studying for hours without pause. But in recent years, I’ve watched that capacity for intense focus dissolve into endless browsing on my phone. My attention span now shrinks like a slug at the touch of a thumb. Engaging with books for enjoyment seems less like nourishment and more like a marathon. And for someone who creates content for a living, this is a occupational risk as well as something that left me disheartened. I aimed to regain that mental elasticity, to halt the mental decline.

So, about a year ago, I made a modest vow: every time I came across a term I didn’t know – whether in a novel, an piece, or an casual discussion – I would research it and write it down. Not a thing elaborate, no leather-bound journal or fountain pen. Just a ongoing record kept, amusingly, on my phone. Each seven days, I’d spend a few minutes reviewing the collection back in an attempt to imprint the word into my recall.

The list now covers almost 20 pages, and this small ritual has been quietly life-changing. The payoff is less about peacocking with uncommon adjectives – which, to be honest, can make you appear insufferable – and more about the cognitive exercise of the practice. Each time I search for and record a word, I feel a slight expansion, as though some neglected part of my mind is stirring again. Even if I never deploy “phantom” in dialogue, the very act of spotting, documenting and revising it interrupts the drift into passive, semi-skimmed focus.

There is also a journalling aspect to it – it acts as something of a journal, a log of where I’ve been reading, what I’ve been pondering and who I’ve been hearing.

It's not as if it’s an simple routine to maintain. It is often very impractical. If I’m reading on the tube, I have to pause in the middle, take out my device and type “millennialism” into my Google doc while trying not to bump the stranger squeezed against me. It can slow my pace to a frustrating crawl. (The Kindle, with its integrated dictionary, is much kinder). And then there’s the reviewing (which I frequently neglect to do), dutifully browsing through my growing vocabulary collection like I’m preparing for a word test.

Realistically, I integrate maybe five percent of these words into my daily speech. “unreformable” made the cut. “mournful” as well. But the majority of them stay like exhibits – admired and catalogued but seldom used.

Still, it’s rendered my mind much keener. I find myself reaching less often for the same overused selection of adjectives, and more frequently for something exact and strong. Rarely are more gratifying than discovering the perfect word you were searching for – like finding the missing component that snaps the picture into position.

In an era when our gadgets drain our focus with relentless effectiveness, it feels subversive to use my own as a instrument for slow thought. And it has given me back something I worried I’d lost – the pleasure of engaging a intellect that, after years of slack scrolling, is finally stirring again.