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As a child, I devoured books until my eyes blurred. When my GCSEs arrived, I demonstrated the stamina of a ascetic, studying for hours without a break. But in recent years, I’ve watched that capacity for deep focus dissolve into endless browsing on my phone. My attention span now contracts like a snail at the tap of a thumb. Reading for pleasure feels less like nourishment and more like endurance training. And for a person 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 brain rot.

Therefore, about a year ago, I made a modest promise: every time I came across a term I didn’t understand – whether in a novel, an article, or an casual discussion – I would look it up and record it. Not a thing elaborate, no leather-bound journal or fountain pen. Just a ongoing record maintained, amusingly, on my phone. Each week, I’d devote a few moments reviewing the list back in an effort to lodge the word into my memory.

The list now covers almost 20 pages, and this small ritual has been quietly life-changing. The payoff is less about peacocking with uncommon adjectives – which, to be honest, 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 use “eidolon” in conversation, the very act of spotting, documenting and revising it breaks the slide into inactive, superficial attention.

Additionally, there's a journalling element to it – it acts as something of a diary, a log of where I’ve been engaging, what I’ve been thinking about and who I’ve been listening to.

It's not as if it’s an easy habit to keep up. It is frequently very impractical. If I’m reading on the tube, I have to stop mid-paragraph, take out my device and enter “millennialism” into my digital document while trying not to bump the person pressed against me. It can reduce my pace to a frustrating crawl. (The Kindle, with its integrated lexicon, is much kinder). And then there’s the revising (which I frequently forget to do), dutifully scrolling through my expanding word-hoard like I’m studying for a vocabulary test.

In practice, I incorporate perhaps 5% of these words into my daily conversation. “Incorrigible” was adopted. “mournful” too. But the majority of them stay like exhibits – admired and listed but seldom used.

Nevertheless, it’s made my mind much keener. I notice I'm reaching less often for the same tired handful of descriptors, and more frequently for something precise and muscular. Rarely are more gratifying than unearthing the exact word you were searching for – like finding the missing puzzle piece that locks the picture into place.

In an era when our devices drain our focus with merciless efficiency, it feels subversive to use mine as a instrument for deliberate thought. And it has restored to me something I worried I’d forfeited – the pleasure of exercising a intellect that, after years of lazy browsing, is finally stirring again.