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As a youngster, I devoured books until my eyes blurred. Once my GCSEs arrived, I exercised the endurance of a monk, studying for lengthy periods without a break. But in recent years, I’ve watched that capacity for intense concentration fade into infinite scrolling on my device. My attention span now shrinks like a slug at the touch of a thumb. Reading for pleasure feels less like nourishment and more like a marathon. And for a person who writes for a living, 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.

So, about a year ago, I made a modest promise: every time I encountered a term I didn’t understand – whether in a novel, an article, or an overheard discussion – I would research it and record it. Nothing elaborate, no elegant notebook or fountain pen. Just a ongoing record kept, ironically, on my smartphone. Each week, I’d spend a few moments reading the collection back in an attempt to lodge the word into my recall.

The list now covers almost twenty sheets, and this small habit has been subtly transformative. The payoff is less about showing off with uncommon adjectives – which, to be honest, can make you appear unbearable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the practice. Each time I search for and record a word, I feel a slight expansion, as though some underused part of my mind is flexing again. Even if I never deploy “phantom” in conversation, the very process of spotting, documenting and reviewing it interrupts the drift into passive, superficial focus.

There is also a diary-keeping aspect to it – it functions as something of a diary, a log of where I’ve been reading, what I’ve been thinking about and who I’ve been hearing.

It's not as if it’s an simple habit to maintain. It is frequently extremely inconvenient. If I’m engaged on the subway, I have to pause in the middle, take out my device and enter “millenarianism” into my Google doc while trying not to elbow the person squeezed against me. It can slow my reading to a maddening crawl. (The e-reader, with its built-in lexicon, is much kinder). And then there’s the revising (which I frequently neglect to do), dutifully scrolling through my expanding word-hoard like I’m studying for a vocabulary test.

Realistically, I integrate perhaps 5% of these terms into my everyday conversation. “Incorrigible” was adopted. “mournful” too. But the majority of them remain like exhibits – admired and listed but seldom used.

Nevertheless, it’s rendered my mind much sharper. I find myself turning less often for the same tired selection of adjectives, and more frequently for something precise and muscular. Few things are more satisfying than discovering the exact word you were seeking – like finding the missing component that snaps the image into position.

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