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As a youngster, I devoured books until my vision grew hazy. Once my GCSEs arrived, I demonstrated the endurance of a ascetic, studying for lengthy periods without a break. But in lately, I’ve watched that ability for intense concentration fade into infinite browsing on my phone. My attention span now shrinks like a snail at the touch of a thumb. Reading for pleasure feels less like sustenance and more like a marathon. And for someone who writes for a profession, this is a professional hazard as well as something that left me disheartened. I wanted to restore that cognitive flexibility, to stop the brain rot.

Therefore, about a twelve months back, I made a small vow: every time I came across a word I didn’t know – whether in a novel, an piece, or an overheard conversation – I would research it and record it. Not a thing fancy, no leather-bound journal or stylish pen. Just a running list kept, amusingly, on my smartphone. Each week, I’d spend a few minutes reviewing the list back in an attempt to imprint the word into my recall.

The list now spans almost 20 pages, and this small ritual has been subtly life-changing. The payoff is less about showing off with uncommon adjectives – which, let’s face it, can make you sound insufferable – and more about the cognitive exercise of the ritual. Each time I look up and note a word, I feel a faint expansion, as though some underused part of my brain is stirring again. Even if I never deploy “eidolon” in conversation, the very process of spotting, logging and reviewing it interrupts the slide into inactive, semi-skimmed attention.

There is also a journalling element to it – it functions as something of a diary, a log of where I’ve been engaging, 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 very impractical. If I’m engaged on the tube, I have to pause mid-paragraph, pull out my phone and enter “millennialism” into my Google doc while trying not to bump the stranger pressed against me. It can reduce my pace to a frustrating crawl. (The e-reader, with its built-in lexicon, is much kinder). And then there’s the revising (which I often neglect to do), dutifully scrolling through my expanding vocabulary collection like I’m preparing for a word test.

Realistically, I integrate perhaps 5% of these words into my daily conversation. “Incorrigible” made the cut. “Lugubrious” too. But the majority of them remain like exhibits – appreciated and catalogued but rarely handled.

Nevertheless, it’s made my thinking much sharper. I find myself reaching less frequently for the same overused handful of adjectives, and more often for something precise and strong. Few things are more satisfying than unearthing the exact word you were searching for – like finding the lost puzzle piece that locks the picture into place.

In an era when our devices drain our focus with merciless effectiveness, it feels subversive to use mine as a instrument for slow thought. And it has given me back something I feared I’d forfeited – the joy of exercising a mind that, after years of lazy browsing, is at last stirring again.