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As a child, I consumed books until my eyes grew hazy. Once my GCSEs arrived, I demonstrated the stamina of a monk, studying for lengthy periods without pause. But in lately, I’ve watched that ability for intense concentration dissolve into infinite browsing on my device. My focus now contracts like a slug at the tap of a finger. Engaging with books for enjoyment feels less like nourishment and more like endurance training. And for a person who creates content for a profession, this is a occupational risk as well as something that left me disheartened. I wanted to regain that cognitive flexibility, to stop the mental decline.

So, about a year ago, I made a small vow: every time I encountered a word I didn’t know – whether in a novel, an piece, or an overheard conversation – I would research it and write it down. Nothing fancy, no leather-bound journal or stylish pen. Just a ongoing record maintained, amusingly, on my smartphone. Each seven days, I’d devote a few moments reading the list back in an attempt to imprint the vocabulary into my recall.

The record now covers almost twenty sheets, and this tiny habit has been quietly life-changing. The payoff is less about peacocking with obscure adjectives – which, to be honest, can make you appear unbearable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the practice. Each time I look up and record a word, I feel a faint stretch, as though some neglected part of my brain is flexing again. Even if I never deploy “eidolon” in dialogue, the very act of spotting, logging and revising it breaks the drift into inactive, superficial focus.

Additionally, there's a diary-keeping aspect to it – it acts as something of a journal, a record of where I’ve been engaging, what I’ve been pondering and who I’ve been hearing.

Not that it’s an easy routine to keep up. It is frequently very impractical. If I’m engaged on the tube, I have to stop in the middle, take out my phone and enter “millenarianism” into my digital document while trying not to elbow the stranger pressed against me. It can slow my pace to a maddening speed. (The Kindle, with its integrated lexicon, is much kinder). And then there’s the reviewing (which I often forget to do), dutifully browsing through my growing word-hoard like I’m preparing for a vocabulary test.

In practice, I incorporate perhaps 5% of these words into my daily conversation. “unreformable” made the cut. “Lugubrious” too. But the majority of them stay like museum pieces – admired and catalogued but seldom used.

Nevertheless, it’s rendered my thinking much keener. I find myself turning less often for the same tired selection of adjectives, and more frequently for something precise and strong. Rarely are more gratifying than discovering the exact term you were searching for – like locating the missing puzzle piece that snaps the picture into position.

In an era when our gadgets siphon off our attention with merciless efficiency, it feels subversive to use mine as a instrument for deliberate thought. And it has restored to me something I worried I’d lost – the joy of exercising a intellect that, after a long time of slack browsing, is at last waking up again.