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As a child, I consumed novels until my eyes blurred. When my GCSEs came around, I exercised the endurance of a monk, studying for lengthy periods without a break. But in lately, I’ve observed that capacity for deep concentration dissolve into endless browsing on my device. My attention span now shrinks like a snail at the touch of a finger. Reading for enjoyment feels less like sustenance and more like endurance training. And for a person who creates content for a living, this is a professional hazard as well as something that left me disheartened. I wanted to regain that cognitive flexibility, to stop the brain rot.

So, about a year ago, I made a small promise: every time I encountered a word I didn’t know – whether in a book, an piece, or an casual conversation – I would research it and record it. Not a thing elaborate, no elegant notebook or stylish pen. Just a running list maintained, amusingly, on my smartphone. Each seven days, I’d spend a few minutes reviewing the collection back in an effort to lodge the word into my memory.

The record now spans almost 20 pages, and this tiny habit has been subtly transformative. The payoff is less about peacocking with obscure adjectives – which, let’s face it, can make you sound insufferable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the ritual. Each time I search for and record a word, I feel a slight expansion, as though some neglected part of my brain is flexing again. Even if I never use “phantom” in dialogue, the very act of noticing, documenting and revising it interrupts the drift into passive, semi-skimmed attention.

Additionally, there's a journalling aspect to it – it functions as something of a journal, a record of where I’ve been engaging, what I’ve been pondering and who I’ve been listening to.

Not that it’s an easy habit to keep up. It is often extremely impractical. If I’m engaged on the subway, I have to pause in the middle, pull out my phone and enter “millenarianism” into my digital document while trying not to elbow the person pressed against me. It can slow my pace to a maddening speed. (The Kindle, with its integrated dictionary, is much kinder). And then there’s the revising (which I often neglect to do), conscientiously browsing through my growing word-hoard like I’m preparing for a vocabulary test.

In practice, I incorporate perhaps 5% of these words into my everyday conversation. “Incorrigible” was adopted. “mournful” too. But the majority of them remain like museum pieces – appreciated and catalogued but seldom handled.

Nevertheless, it’s rendered my mind much keener. I find myself turning less frequently for the same tired selection of descriptors, and more frequently for something precise and strong. Rarely are more satisfying than discovering the exact term you were searching for – like locating the lost puzzle piece that snaps the image into position.

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