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As a youngster, I consumed books until my vision grew hazy. When my GCSEs came around, I exercised the stamina of a monk, revising for lengthy periods without pause. But in recent years, I’ve watched that ability for deep concentration fade into infinite browsing on my device. My focus now contracts like a snail at the touch of a finger. Reading for enjoyment feels less like nourishment and more like a marathon. And for a person 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.

So, about a year ago, I made a modest vow: every time I came across a word I didn’t understand – whether in a book, an article, or an casual conversation – I would research it and write it down. Nothing elaborate, no leather-bound journal or fountain pen. Just a running list kept, amusingly, on my phone. Each seven days, I’d spend a few minutes reading the collection back in an effort to lodge the vocabulary into my memory.

The list now covers almost twenty sheets, and this tiny ritual has been subtly transformative. The benefit is less about showing off with obscure adjectives – which, to be honest, can make you appear unbearable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the ritual. Each time I look up and note a term, I feel a slight 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, documenting and reviewing it breaks the drift into inactive, semi-skimmed focus.

Additionally, there's a journalling element to it – it functions as something of a diary, a log of where I’ve been engaging, what I’ve been pondering and who I’ve been hearing.

It's not as if it’s an simple routine to keep up. It is frequently extremely inconvenient. If I’m reading on the tube, I have to stop in the middle, take out my phone and type “millennialism” into my Google doc while trying not to bump the person pressed against me. It can reduce my reading to a maddening speed. (The Kindle, with its built-in lexicon, is much easier). And then there’s the revising (which I often neglect to do), dutifully browsing through my growing vocabulary collection like I’m studying for a word test.

Realistically, I integrate perhaps 5% of these terms into my daily conversation. “unreformable” was adopted. “Lugubrious” as well. But the majority of them remain like museum pieces – appreciated and catalogued but rarely used.

Still, it’s made my mind much sharper. I notice I'm reaching less often for the same overused selection of adjectives, and more often for something precise and muscular. Few things are more satisfying than discovering the exact term you were searching for – like finding the missing puzzle piece that snaps the picture into place.

In an era when our devices siphon off our focus with relentless effectiveness, it feels rebellious to use mine as a instrument for slow thinking. And it has given me back something I worried I’d lost – the pleasure of exercising a intellect that, after a long time of lazy scrolling, is at last stirring again.