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As a youngster, I consumed books until my vision blurred. Once my GCSEs came around, I exercised the stamina of a monk, studying for lengthy periods without pause. But in recent years, I’ve observed that capacity for deep concentration fade into infinite scrolling on my device. My attention span now contracts like a slug at the touch of a thumb. Engaging with books for enjoyment feels less like sustenance and more like endurance training. And for someone who writes for a profession, this is a occupational risk as well as something that left me disheartened. I aimed to regain that mental elasticity, to halt the brain rot.

Therefore, about a year ago, I made a modest vow: every time I encountered a word I didn’t know – whether in a novel, an article, or an casual conversation – I would look it up and write it down. Nothing fancy, no leather-bound journal or stylish pen. Just a running list kept, ironically, on my phone. Each seven days, I’d spend a few minutes reading the collection back in an attempt to imprint the word into my memory.

The list now spans almost twenty sheets, and this small ritual has been subtly life-changing. The benefit is less about showing off with obscure descriptors – which, let’s face it, can make you appear insufferable – and more about the cognitive exercise of the practice. Each time I look up and record a term, I feel a faint expansion, as though some neglected part of my mind is stirring again. Even if I never deploy “eidolon” in dialogue, the very process of spotting, documenting and revising it breaks the drift into inactive, superficial attention.

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

Not that it’s an easy habit to keep up. It is often extremely impractical. If I’m engaged on the subway, I have to pause mid-paragraph, pull out my phone and enter “millenarianism” into my Google doc while trying not to elbow the person squeezed against me. It can slow my pace to a frustrating speed. (The Kindle, with its built-in lexicon, is much easier). 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 integrate maybe 5% of these words into my everyday speech. “unreformable” made the cut. “mournful” too. But the majority of them remain like museum pieces – admired and listed but seldom used.

Nevertheless, it’s made my mind much keener. I find myself turning less frequently for the same tired selection of adjectives, and more often for something exact and muscular. Rarely are more gratifying than discovering the perfect term you were searching for – like finding the lost puzzle piece that locks the image into place.

In an era when our gadgets drain our attention with relentless efficiency, it feels subversive to use mine as a tool for deliberate thinking. And it has restored to me something I worried I’d forfeited – the pleasure of engaging a mind that, after years of lazy scrolling, is at last stirring again.