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As a child, I consumed novels until my eyes blurred. Once my exams arrived, I exercised the stamina of a monk, revising for hours without a break. But in lately, I’ve watched that capacity for intense concentration dissolve into endless browsing on my device. My attention span now contracts like a slug at the tap of a finger. Engaging with books for enjoyment seems less like nourishment and more like endurance training. And for someone who writes for a profession, this is a occupational risk as well as something that made me sad. I aimed to restore that cognitive flexibility, to stop the mental decline.

So, about a year ago, I made a modest vow: every time I encountered a term I didn’t know – whether in a book, an piece, or an casual conversation – I would research it and write it down. Nothing elaborate, no elegant notebook or fountain pen. Just a running list kept, ironically, on my smartphone. Each seven days, I’d devote a few minutes reviewing the collection back in an effort to imprint the word into my recall.

The list now spans almost twenty sheets, and this tiny habit has been subtly life-changing. The benefit is less about showing off with obscure descriptors – which, to be honest, can make you sound unbearable – and more about the cognitive exercise of the practice. Each time I look up and record a term, I feel a faint stretch, as though some neglected part of my mind is stirring again. Even if I never deploy “phantom” in dialogue, the very process of spotting, documenting and revising it breaks the slide into passive, semi-skimmed focus.

Additionally, there's a journalling element to it – it acts as something of a journal, 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 easy habit to maintain. It is often very impractical. If I’m engaged on the tube, I have to stop mid-paragraph, pull out my phone and enter “millennialism” into my digital document while trying not to bump the stranger squeezed against me. It can slow my reading to a frustrating crawl. (The e-reader, with its integrated dictionary, is much kinder). And then there’s the revising (which I frequently neglect to do), conscientiously scrolling through my expanding vocabulary collection like I’m studying for a word test.

In practice, I incorporate maybe 5% of these words into my everyday conversation. “Incorrigible” made the cut. “Lugubrious” too. But the majority of them remain like museum pieces – appreciated and catalogued but rarely used.

Nevertheless, it’s rendered my thinking much keener. I notice I'm reaching less often for the same tired selection of adjectives, and more frequently for something precise and muscular. Few things are more gratifying than discovering the exact term you were searching for – like locating the lost component that snaps the image into place.

In an era when our devices siphon off our attention with merciless efficiency, it feels rebellious to use mine as a instrument for deliberate thinking. And it has restored to me something I feared I’d lost – the pleasure of engaging a mind that, after years of slack scrolling, is at last waking up again.