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As a youngster, I devoured books until my vision blurred. When my GCSEs arrived, I exercised the endurance of a ascetic, studying for lengthy periods without pause. But in lately, I’ve observed that capacity for deep focus fade into infinite scrolling on my device. My attention span now contracts like a slug at the tap of a thumb. Reading for pleasure feels less like sustenance 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 wanted to restore that mental elasticity, to halt the mental decline.

Therefore, about a year ago, I made a small vow: every time I encountered a word I didn’t know – whether in a novel, an article, or an overheard discussion – I would look it up and write it down. Not a thing elaborate, no elegant notebook or stylish pen. Just a running list kept, ironically, on my phone. Each week, I’d devote a few minutes reviewing the list back in an effort to lodge the word into my recall.

The list now covers almost 20 pages, and this tiny habit has been subtly transformative. The benefit is less about showing off with uncommon 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 term, I feel a faint stretch, as though some neglected part of my mind is flexing again. Even if I never use “eidolon” in dialogue, the very act of noticing, logging and reviewing it interrupts the drift into passive, superficial attention.

There is also a journalling element to it – it acts as something of a diary, a record of where I’ve been engaging, 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 often extremely inconvenient. If I’m engaged on the subway, I have to pause in the middle, take out my phone and enter “millenarianism” into my digital document while trying not to bump the stranger 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 growing word-hoard like I’m studying for a word test.

Realistically, I incorporate maybe five percent of these terms into my everyday speech. “unreformable” was adopted. “mournful” as well. But the majority of them stay like exhibits – admired and catalogued but rarely handled.

Still, it’s made my thinking much sharper. I notice I'm reaching less often for the same tired handful of descriptors, and more frequently for something exact and strong. Few things are more satisfying than discovering the perfect word you were seeking – like locating the missing component that snaps the image into place.

At a time when our devices siphon off our focus with merciless efficiency, it feels rebellious to use mine as a instrument for slow thought. And it has restored to me something I feared I’d lost – the joy of exercising a mind that, after a long time of slack scrolling, is finally stirring again.