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When I was a youngster, I devoured books until my vision blurred. When my exams arrived, I demonstrated the stamina of a monk, revising for hours without pause. But in recent years, I’ve watched that capacity for intense concentration dissolve into infinite scrolling on my device. My attention span now shrinks like a snail at the touch of a thumb. Engaging with books for pleasure seems less like sustenance and more like a marathon. And for someone who creates content for a living, this is a occupational risk as well as something that made me sad. I wanted to regain that cognitive flexibility, to stop the brain rot.

Therefore, about a year ago, I made a modest promise: every time I came across a term I didn’t know – whether in a novel, an article, or an casual discussion – I would research it and record it. Nothing fancy, no leather-bound journal or stylish pen. Just a running list kept, ironically, on my smartphone. Each seven days, I’d spend a few moments reading the list back in an attempt to lodge the word into my memory.

The record now spans almost 20 pages, and this tiny ritual has been quietly transformative. The payoff is less about showing off with obscure descriptors – which, to be honest, can make you appear insufferable – and more about the cognitive exercise of the practice. Each time I look up and record a word, I feel a slight stretch, as though some underused part of my mind is flexing again. Even if I never deploy “eidolon” in conversation, the very process of spotting, documenting and reviewing it breaks the drift into inactive, semi-skimmed attention.

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

It's not as if it’s an simple habit to maintain. It is often extremely inconvenient. If I’m reading on the tube, I have to stop in the middle, take out my device and type “millennialism” into my digital document while trying not to bump the person pressed against me. It can slow my reading to a frustrating speed. (The e-reader, with its built-in dictionary, is much kinder). And then there’s the revising (which I frequently neglect to do), dutifully scrolling through my expanding vocabulary collection like I’m studying for a vocabulary test.

Realistically, I integrate maybe five percent of these terms into my daily conversation. “Incorrigible” was adopted. “Lugubrious” as well. But most of them remain like exhibits – admired and listed but seldom handled.

Nevertheless, it’s rendered my thinking much sharper. I find myself reaching less often for the same tired handful of adjectives, and more often for something precise and strong. Rarely are more gratifying than discovering the perfect term you were searching for – like finding the missing component that snaps the picture into position.

In an era when our devices drain our focus with relentless effectiveness, it feels subversive to use mine as a tool for deliberate thinking. And it has given me back something I worried I’d lost – the pleasure of engaging a mind that, after years of lazy browsing, is at last stirring again.