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When I was a child, I devoured novels until my eyes grew hazy. Once my GCSEs arrived, I demonstrated the stamina of a ascetic, revising for lengthy periods without a break. But in recent years, I’ve observed that ability for intense focus dissolve into endless scrolling on my phone. My focus now shrinks like a slug at the tap of a thumb. Reading for pleasure seems less like sustenance and more like a marathon. 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 small promise: every time I encountered a word I didn’t understand – whether in a book, an article, or an overheard conversation – I would look it up and record it. Not a thing elaborate, no elegant notebook or fountain pen. Just a ongoing record maintained, ironically, on my phone. Each seven days, I’d spend a few minutes reading the collection back in an attempt to imprint the word into my memory.

The list now covers almost twenty sheets, and this tiny ritual has been quietly transformative. The payoff 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 word, I feel a faint stretch, as though some underused part of my mind is flexing again. Even if I never deploy “eidolon” in conversation, the very act of noticing, logging and reviewing it breaks the slide into inactive, superficial attention.

There is also a journalling aspect 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.

Not that it’s an simple habit to maintain. It is often very impractical. If I’m reading on the subway, I have to pause mid-paragraph, pull out my device and type “millennialism” into my Google doc while trying not to bump the person squeezed 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 reviewing (which I frequently neglect to do), conscientiously browsing through my growing word-hoard like I’m preparing for a word test.

Realistically, I incorporate perhaps 5% of these terms into my daily conversation. “unreformable” made the cut. “Lugubrious” as well. But the majority of them remain like exhibits – appreciated and catalogued but rarely handled.

Nevertheless, it’s rendered my mind much sharper. I notice I'm reaching less often for the same tired selection of descriptors, and more frequently for something exact and muscular. Few things are more gratifying than unearthing the exact word you were searching for – like locating the lost puzzle piece that locks the picture into place.

In an era when our gadgets drain our focus with relentless efficiency, it feels subversive to use my own as a tool for deliberate thought. And it has given me back something I feared I’d lost – the joy of engaging a intellect that, after years of lazy browsing, is finally waking up again.