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When I was a youngster, I consumed books until my vision grew hazy. When my exams arrived, I demonstrated the endurance of a monk, revising for lengthy periods without a break. But in recent years, I’ve observed that capacity for intense concentration dissolve into endless scrolling on my phone. My attention span now contracts like a snail at the touch of a finger. Engaging with books for pleasure seems less like nourishment and more like a marathon. And for someone who writes for a profession, this is a occupational risk as well as something that made me sad. I aimed to regain that cognitive flexibility, to stop the brain rot.

Therefore, about a year ago, I made a small promise: 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. Not a thing elaborate, no leather-bound journal or stylish pen. Just a running list maintained, amusingly, on my smartphone. Each seven days, I’d spend a few minutes reviewing the collection back in an attempt to lodge the word into my recall.

The record now covers almost twenty sheets, and this small ritual has been quietly life-changing. The payoff is less about showing off with uncommon descriptors – which, to be honest, can make you sound insufferable – and more about the cognitive exercise of the ritual. Each time I search for and note a word, I feel a faint stretch, as though some underused part of my mind is stirring again. Even if I never use “phantom” in dialogue, the very act of spotting, documenting and revising it interrupts the drift into inactive, semi-skimmed focus.

There is also a diary-keeping aspect to it – it functions as something of a journal, 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 simple routine to keep up. It is frequently very impractical. If I’m reading on the subway, I have to pause mid-paragraph, pull out my phone and enter “millenarianism” into my Google doc while trying not to bump the person squeezed against me. It can reduce my reading to a frustrating crawl. (The Kindle, with its integrated lexicon, is much kinder). And then there’s the revising (which I frequently neglect to do), dutifully browsing through my growing word-hoard like I’m studying for a word test.

Realistically, I integrate maybe five percent of these words into my everyday speech. “Incorrigible” made the cut. “mournful” too. But the majority of them stay like museum pieces – admired and listed but seldom used.

Nevertheless, it’s rendered my mind much sharper. I notice I'm turning less often for the same overused handful of adjectives, and more often for something precise and strong. Few things are more gratifying than unearthing the exact term you were seeking – like finding the lost component that locks the picture into position.

At a time when our devices siphon off our focus with relentless efficiency, it feels rebellious to use my own as a instrument for slow thinking. And it has restored to me something I feared I’d lost – the joy of exercising a intellect that, after years of slack browsing, is finally waking up again.