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As a youngster, I consumed books until my eyes grew hazy. When my GCSEs arrived, I demonstrated the endurance of a monk, revising for lengthy periods without a break. But in recent years, I’ve watched that capacity for deep concentration dissolve into endless scrolling on my device. My attention span now shrinks like a slug at the tap of a thumb. Reading for enjoyment seems less like nourishment and more like endurance training. And for someone who creates content for a living, this is a professional hazard as well as something that made me sad. I wanted to regain that cognitive flexibility, to stop the mental decline.

So, about a twelve months back, I made a modest vow: every time I came across a word I didn’t understand – whether in a novel, an piece, or an casual conversation – I would look it up and write it down. Not a thing fancy, no leather-bound journal or fountain pen. Just a ongoing record maintained, amusingly, on my smartphone. Each seven days, I’d devote a few minutes reviewing the list back in an effort to imprint the vocabulary into my recall.

The record now covers almost 20 pages, and this tiny ritual has been subtly transformative. The benefit is less about showing off with uncommon descriptors – which, to be honest, can make you appear unbearable – and more about the cognitive exercise of the ritual. Each time I look up and note a term, I feel a faint stretch, as though some underused part of my mind is flexing again. Even if I never use “phantom” in dialogue, the very act of spotting, logging and reviewing it interrupts the drift into inactive, superficial 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 listening to.

Not that it’s an easy routine to keep up. It is often extremely impractical. If I’m engaged on the tube, I have to pause in the middle, pull out my phone and type “millennialism” into my digital document while trying not to elbow the stranger pressed against me. It can reduce my reading to a frustrating crawl. (The e-reader, with its built-in dictionary, is much easier). And then there’s the revising (which I often forget to do), dutifully browsing through my growing vocabulary collection like I’m preparing for a vocabulary test.

In practice, I integrate perhaps 5% of these terms into my everyday conversation. “unreformable” was adopted. “mournful” too. But most of them remain like exhibits – admired and listed but seldom used.

Nevertheless, it’s rendered my thinking much keener. I find myself turning less often for the same overused selection of descriptors, and more often for something precise and muscular. Few things are more satisfying than unearthing the perfect word you were searching for – like finding the lost puzzle piece that locks the picture into position.

In an era when our devices drain our attention with merciless effectiveness, 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 joy of engaging a mind that, after a long time of slack browsing, is finally stirring again.