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When I was a child, I consumed novels until my eyes blurred. When my exams came around, I exercised the stamina of a monk, studying for lengthy periods without a break. But in recent years, I’ve observed that ability for deep focus dissolve into endless scrolling on my device. My attention span now shrinks like a slug at the tap of a finger. Engaging with books for enjoyment feels less like nourishment and more like endurance training. And for a person who creates content for a profession, this is a professional hazard as well as something that left me disheartened. I wanted to regain that cognitive flexibility, to stop the mental decline.

So, about a year ago, I made a modest promise: every time I encountered a term I didn’t know – whether in a novel, an piece, or an casual discussion – I would research it and record it. Nothing fancy, no elegant notebook or stylish pen. Just a running list maintained, ironically, on my smartphone. Each seven days, I’d spend a few moments reading the list back in an effort to imprint the word into my recall.

The record now covers almost twenty sheets, and this tiny ritual has been quietly life-changing. The payoff is less about showing off with obscure descriptors – which, to be honest, can make you appear insufferable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the ritual. Each time I search for and note a word, I feel a faint expansion, as though some neglected part of my mind is flexing again. Even if I never use “phantom” in dialogue, the very process of noticing, documenting and revising it interrupts the slide into inactive, superficial focus.

There is also a journalling aspect 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 easy routine to maintain. It is often extremely impractical. If I’m reading on the tube, I have to stop mid-paragraph, pull out my device and type “millennialism” into my Google doc while trying not to elbow the person squeezed against me. It can reduce my reading to a frustrating speed. (The e-reader, with its integrated lexicon, is much kinder). And then there’s the revising (which I often forget to do), dutifully scrolling through my growing vocabulary collection like I’m preparing for a word test.

Realistically, I integrate perhaps 5% of these words into my everyday conversation. “Incorrigible” was adopted. “Lugubrious” too. But the majority of them stay like exhibits – admired and listed but seldom handled.

Nevertheless, it’s rendered my thinking much sharper. I notice I'm reaching less frequently for the same tired handful of descriptors, and more often for something exact and muscular. Few things are more satisfying than unearthing the perfect word you were searching for – like finding the missing puzzle piece that locks the image into position.

In an era when our gadgets drain our focus with relentless effectiveness, it feels subversive to use mine as a instrument for slow thought. And it has given me back something I feared I’d lost – the joy of engaging a intellect that, after a long time of lazy scrolling, is finally stirring again.