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When I was a youngster, I consumed novels until my eyes blurred. Once my exams came around, I exercised the endurance of a ascetic, revising for lengthy periods without a break. But in recent years, I’ve watched that capacity for deep concentration fade into infinite browsing on my phone. My focus now shrinks like a snail at the tap of a thumb. Engaging with books for pleasure seems less like nourishment and more like endurance training. And for someone who creates content for a living, this is a occupational risk as well as something that left me disheartened. I aimed to regain that mental elasticity, to halt the brain rot.

Therefore, about a year ago, I made a small vow: every time I encountered a word I didn’t know – whether in a book, an article, or an overheard discussion – I would research it and write it down. Nothing elaborate, no elegant notebook or fountain pen. Just a running list kept, amusingly, on my smartphone. Each week, I’d devote a few minutes reviewing the list back in an attempt to imprint the vocabulary into my memory.

The record now spans almost 20 pages, and this small habit has been quietly life-changing. The payoff is less about peacocking with uncommon descriptors – which, let’s face it, can make you sound unbearable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the practice. Each time I search for and note a word, I feel a slight stretch, as though some neglected part of my brain is flexing again. Even if I never deploy “phantom” in conversation, the very act of spotting, documenting and reviewing it breaks the drift into inactive, semi-skimmed focus.

There is also a journalling aspect to it – it acts as something of a journal, a log of where I’ve been reading, what I’ve been thinking about and who I’ve been hearing.

It's not as if it’s an easy routine to maintain. It is frequently extremely impractical. If I’m engaged on the subway, I have to stop mid-paragraph, take out my phone and enter “millennialism” into my Google doc while trying not to bump the person squeezed against me. It can reduce my reading to a frustrating crawl. (The Kindle, with its integrated lexicon, is much easier). And then there’s the reviewing (which I often neglect to do), dutifully browsing through my expanding vocabulary collection like I’m studying for a vocabulary test.

Realistically, I incorporate perhaps 5% of these terms into my daily speech. “unreformable” was adopted. “mournful” too. But the majority of them stay like museum pieces – appreciated and listed but seldom handled.

Nevertheless, it’s made my mind much sharper. I notice I'm turning less frequently for the same tired handful of adjectives, and more frequently for something exact and strong. Rarely are more gratifying than unearthing the perfect term you were seeking – like finding the lost puzzle piece that snaps the picture into place.

In an era when our gadgets siphon off our attention 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 engaging a mind that, after a long time of lazy browsing, is at last stirring again.