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As a youngster, I devoured novels until my eyes grew hazy. When my GCSEs came around, I exercised the stamina of a monk, studying for lengthy periods without a break. But in lately, I’ve watched that capacity for deep concentration dissolve into endless scrolling on my phone. My focus now shrinks like a snail at the touch of a thumb. Reading for pleasure seems less like sustenance and more like a marathon. And for a person who writes for a profession, this is a professional hazard as well as something that left me disheartened. I aimed to regain that cognitive flexibility, to stop the brain rot.

Therefore, about a twelve months back, I made a modest promise: every time I came across a word I didn’t understand – whether in a book, 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 running list maintained, ironically, on my smartphone. Each week, I’d devote a few minutes reviewing the list back in an effort to imprint the word into my memory.

The list now covers almost 20 pages, and this small ritual has been quietly life-changing. The payoff is less about showing off with obscure descriptors – which, to be honest, can make you appear unbearable – and more about the cognitive exercise of the ritual. Each time I search for and note a word, I feel a slight stretch, as though some underused part of my brain is flexing again. Even if I never use “eidolon” in dialogue, the very act of noticing, documenting and reviewing it breaks the slide into inactive, semi-skimmed attention.

Additionally, there's a diary-keeping aspect to it – it acts as something of a diary, a record of where I’ve been reading, what I’ve been pondering and who I’ve been hearing.

It's not as if it’s an easy habit to keep up. It is frequently extremely inconvenient. If I’m reading on the subway, I have to pause in the middle, pull out my phone and enter “millennialism” into my Google doc while trying not to bump the person squeezed against me. It can slow my reading to a maddening speed. (The Kindle, with its built-in dictionary, is much kinder). And then there’s the reviewing (which I frequently neglect to do), dutifully browsing through my expanding word-hoard like I’m preparing for a vocabulary test.

In practice, I incorporate maybe 5% of these words into my everyday conversation. “unreformable” made the cut. “Lugubrious” too. But most of them stay like exhibits – admired and catalogued but seldom handled.

Nevertheless, it’s rendered my mind much keener. I notice I'm reaching less frequently for the same tired selection of descriptors, and more often for something precise and strong. Few things are more gratifying than discovering the exact term you were seeking – like locating the lost puzzle piece that snaps the image into place.

At a time when our devices siphon off our attention with merciless efficiency, it feels rebellious to use my own as a instrument for deliberate thought. And it has restored to me something I feared I’d lost – the joy of engaging a mind that, after a long time of slack scrolling, is at last waking up again.