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As a child, I consumed novels until my vision blurred. Once my GCSEs came around, I exercised the stamina of a monk, studying for lengthy periods without a break. But in recent years, I’ve observed that capacity for intense focus dissolve into endless browsing on my device. My focus now shrinks like a snail at the touch of a finger. Reading for pleasure seems less like nourishment and more like a marathon. 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 cognitive flexibility, to halt the brain rot.

Therefore, about a twelve months back, I made a small vow: every time I came across a term I didn’t know – whether in a novel, an article, or an overheard discussion – I would research it and write it down. Not a thing fancy, no leather-bound journal or stylish pen. Just a ongoing record maintained, ironically, on my smartphone. Each week, I’d devote a few moments reading the collection back in an attempt to lodge the vocabulary into my memory.

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, to be honest, can make you sound insufferable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the ritual. Each time I look up and record a word, I feel a faint stretch, as though some neglected part of my brain is stirring again. Even if I never deploy “eidolon” in dialogue, the very process of noticing, logging and revising it interrupts the slide into inactive, semi-skimmed focus.

Additionally, there's a journalling element 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 listening to.

It's not as if it’s an simple routine to maintain. It is frequently very inconvenient. If I’m engaged on the subway, I have to pause mid-paragraph, pull out my device and enter “millenarianism” into my digital document while trying not to bump the person squeezed against me. It can slow my pace to a maddening speed. (The e-reader, with its built-in lexicon, 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 preparing for a vocabulary test.

In practice, I integrate maybe five percent of these words into my everyday conversation. “unreformable” was adopted. “Lugubrious” too. But most of them stay like exhibits – admired and catalogued but rarely handled.

Still, it’s made my mind much keener. I find myself turning less frequently for the same tired selection of descriptors, and more frequently for something exact and strong. Few things are more gratifying than unearthing the perfect term you were searching for – like locating the lost puzzle piece that locks the image into place.

At a time when our gadgets drain our focus with relentless efficiency, it feels subversive to use mine as a tool for slow thought. And it has restored to me something I worried I’d forfeited – the pleasure of engaging a intellect that, after a long time of slack browsing, is at last waking up again.