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As a youngster, I consumed novels until my eyes blurred. Once my GCSEs came around, I exercised the endurance of a monk, studying for lengthy periods without pause. But in recent years, I’ve observed that ability for deep concentration dissolve into infinite browsing on my phone. My attention span now contracts like a slug at the touch of a thumb. Engaging with books for enjoyment feels less like sustenance and more like endurance training. And for someone who creates content for a profession, this is a occupational risk as well as something that made me sad. I aimed to restore that mental elasticity, to stop the brain rot.

So, about a year ago, I made a modest promise: every time I encountered a term I didn’t know – whether in a novel, an article, or an overheard conversation – I would research it and write it down. Not a thing fancy, no leather-bound journal or fountain pen. Just a ongoing record maintained, amusingly, on my phone. Each seven days, I’d spend a few moments reviewing the list back in an attempt to lodge the word into my recall.

The record now spans almost 20 pages, and this tiny ritual has been quietly life-changing. The benefit is less about peacocking with obscure adjectives – which, let’s face it, can make you appear insufferable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the practice. Each time I look up and record a term, I feel a slight expansion, as though some underused part of my brain is flexing again. Even if I never deploy “phantom” in dialogue, the very act of noticing, documenting and revising it interrupts the drift into passive, semi-skimmed attention.

There is also a journalling element to it – it functions as something of a journal, a record 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 easy habit to keep up. It is frequently very inconvenient. If I’m reading on the subway, I have to pause mid-paragraph, pull out my phone and enter “millennialism” into my Google doc while trying not to bump the stranger pressed against me. It can slow 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 frequently forget to do), conscientiously scrolling through my expanding vocabulary collection like I’m studying for a vocabulary test.

Realistically, I incorporate maybe 5% of these words into my daily speech. “Incorrigible” was adopted. “mournful” as well. But the majority of them remain like exhibits – admired and listed but rarely used.

Still, it’s rendered my mind much keener. I find myself reaching less often for the same overused handful of descriptors, and more frequently for something precise and muscular. Few things are more gratifying than discovering the perfect word you were searching for – like locating the missing puzzle piece that snaps the image into place.

In an era when our gadgets drain our focus with relentless efficiency, it feels rebellious to use mine as a tool for deliberate thinking. And it has given me back something I feared I’d forfeited – the pleasure of engaging a intellect that, after years of lazy scrolling, is at last waking up again.