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When I was a youngster, I consumed novels until my eyes grew hazy. When my GCSEs came around, I demonstrated the endurance of a ascetic, studying for lengthy periods without a break. But in lately, I’ve observed that capacity for intense concentration fade into endless browsing on my phone. My focus now shrinks like a slug at the touch of a finger. Engaging with books for pleasure 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 left me disheartened. I wanted to regain that mental elasticity, to halt the brain rot.

Therefore, about a twelve months back, I made a small vow: every time I encountered a term I didn’t understand – whether in a novel, an piece, or an casual conversation – I would research it and record it. Nothing fancy, no elegant notebook or fountain pen. Just a running list kept, amusingly, on my smartphone. Each week, I’d devote a few moments reviewing the collection back in an attempt to lodge the vocabulary into my memory.

The list now covers almost twenty sheets, and this small habit has been subtly transformative. The payoff is less about showing off with obscure descriptors – which, let’s face it, can make you sound insufferable – and more about the cognitive exercise of the ritual. Each time I search for and record a term, I feel a faint expansion, as though some underused part of my mind is flexing again. Even if I never use “phantom” in dialogue, the very process of spotting, documenting and reviewing it interrupts the slide into passive, superficial focus.

Additionally, there's a diary-keeping element to it – it acts as something of a diary, a record of where I’ve been reading, what I’ve been thinking about and who I’ve been listening to.

Not that 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 device and enter “millennialism” into my Google doc while trying not to bump the person squeezed against me. It can reduce my reading to a maddening crawl. (The Kindle, with its built-in lexicon, is much easier). And then there’s the revising (which I frequently forget to do), dutifully scrolling through my growing vocabulary collection like I’m preparing for a word test.

Realistically, I incorporate perhaps five percent of these terms into my everyday conversation. “Incorrigible” was adopted. “mournful” too. But most of them remain like museum pieces – admired and listed but seldom used.

Nevertheless, it’s rendered my mind much keener. I notice I'm turning less often for the same overused handful of adjectives, and more frequently for something precise and strong. Few things are more gratifying than unearthing the exact term you were seeking – like locating the missing puzzle piece that snaps the image into position.

In an era when our devices siphon off our attention with merciless effectiveness, it feels subversive to use my own as a instrument for deliberate thinking. And it has restored to me something I worried I’d forfeited – the pleasure of engaging a intellect that, after a long time of lazy scrolling, is finally stirring again.