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When I was a youngster, I consumed novels until my vision blurred. When my exams arrived, I demonstrated the stamina of a monk, revising for lengthy periods without a break. But in lately, I’ve watched that ability for intense focus dissolve into infinite browsing on my phone. My focus now shrinks like a slug at the tap of a thumb. Engaging with books for pleasure feels less like nourishment and more like endurance training. And for someone who creates content for a living, this is a professional hazard as well as something that left me disheartened. I wanted to restore that mental elasticity, to halt the brain rot.

So, about a twelve months back, I made a small promise: every time I came across a term I didn’t know – whether in a novel, an article, or an overheard conversation – I would look it up and write it down. Nothing elaborate, no leather-bound journal or stylish pen. Just a ongoing record maintained, amusingly, on my phone. Each seven days, I’d devote a few moments reviewing the list back in an attempt to imprint the word into my memory.

The record now covers almost twenty sheets, and this tiny ritual has been quietly life-changing. The payoff is less about peacocking with obscure adjectives – which, to be honest, can make you appear insufferable – and more about the cognitive exercise of the practice. Each time I search for and note a word, I feel a slight stretch, as though some underused part of my mind is stirring again. Even if I never deploy “eidolon” in dialogue, the very process of noticing, logging and revising it breaks the drift into passive, superficial focus.

There is also a diary-keeping 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.

It's not as if it’s an simple routine to maintain. It is often very impractical. If I’m reading on the tube, I have to stop mid-paragraph, take out my phone 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 e-reader, with its built-in lexicon, is much easier). And then there’s the revising (which I often neglect to do), conscientiously browsing through my expanding vocabulary collection like I’m preparing for a vocabulary test.

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

Nevertheless, it’s made my thinking much keener. I notice I'm reaching less frequently for the same tired handful of descriptors, and more frequently for something exact and muscular. Few things are more satisfying than unearthing the perfect term you were seeking – like locating the missing component that locks the image into place.

In an era when our devices siphon off our focus with merciless effectiveness, it feels rebellious to use my own as a tool for slow thinking. And it has given me back something I feared I’d lost – the joy of exercising a mind that, after a long time of lazy browsing, is finally waking up again.