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When I was a youngster, I devoured novels until my eyes grew hazy. Once my GCSEs arrived, I exercised the endurance of a ascetic, revising for hours without pause. But in recent years, I’ve observed that ability for deep concentration dissolve into endless scrolling on my phone. My attention span now contracts like a snail at the tap of a thumb. Engaging with books for pleasure seems 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 left me disheartened. I aimed to regain that cognitive flexibility, to halt the mental decline.

Therefore, about a twelve months back, I made a small vow: every time I came across a word I didn’t understand – whether in a book, an article, or an overheard conversation – I would look it up and write it down. Not a thing elaborate, no elegant notebook or stylish pen. Just a running list maintained, amusingly, on my smartphone. Each week, I’d spend a few moments reading the list back in an attempt to lodge the word into my recall.

The record now covers almost twenty sheets, and this tiny habit has been subtly life-changing. The payoff is less about peacocking with obscure adjectives – which, to be honest, can make you sound unbearable – and more about the cognitive exercise of the practice. Each time I look up and record a word, I feel a faint stretch, as though some underused part of my brain is stirring again. Even if I never deploy “phantom” in conversation, the very process of spotting, logging and reviewing it interrupts the drift into inactive, semi-skimmed focus.

Additionally, there's a journalling aspect to it – it acts as something of a journal, a log 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 routine to keep up. It is often extremely impractical. If I’m reading on the tube, I have to stop mid-paragraph, pull out my device and enter “millenarianism” into my digital document while trying not to bump the person pressed against me. It can slow my reading to a frustrating speed. (The Kindle, with its built-in lexicon, 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 preparing for a vocabulary test.

Realistically, I integrate perhaps five percent of these terms into my daily conversation. “unreformable” was adopted. “Lugubrious” as well. But most of them remain like museum pieces – admired and listed but rarely used.

Still, it’s made my thinking much sharper. I find myself turning less frequently for the same tired selection of descriptors, and more often for something precise and muscular. Few things are more gratifying than discovering the perfect term you were seeking – like finding the lost component that snaps the picture into position.

In an era when our gadgets siphon off our focus with merciless effectiveness, it feels rebellious to use my own as a instrument for slow thinking. And it has given me back something I worried I’d forfeited – the joy of engaging a mind that, after years of slack browsing, is at last stirring again.