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When I was a child, I consumed books until my vision grew hazy. When my exams arrived, I exercised the endurance of a ascetic, studying for lengthy periods without pause. But in recent years, I’ve observed that capacity for intense concentration dissolve into infinite browsing on my device. My attention span now shrinks like a snail at the tap of a finger. Engaging with books for enjoyment feels less like sustenance and more like a marathon. And for a person who writes for a living, this is a occupational risk as well as something that left me disheartened. I aimed to regain that cognitive flexibility, to halt the mental decline.

Therefore, about a twelve months back, I made a small vow: every time I came across a word I didn’t understand – whether in a book, an piece, or an casual conversation – I would look it up and record it. Nothing fancy, no elegant notebook or stylish pen. Just a ongoing record maintained, amusingly, on my smartphone. Each week, I’d spend a few moments reading the collection back in an attempt to imprint the vocabulary into my recall.

The list now spans almost twenty sheets, and this small ritual has been quietly life-changing. The benefit is less about showing off with obscure descriptors – which, let’s face it, can make you sound insufferable – and more about the cognitive exercise of the practice. Each time I look up and note a term, I feel a faint expansion, 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 revising it interrupts the slide into passive, superficial focus.

Additionally, there's a journalling element to it – it acts as something of a journal, a record of where I’ve been engaging, what I’ve been thinking about and who I’ve been listening to.

Not that it’s an simple routine to keep up. It is frequently very impractical. If I’m engaged on the tube, I have to pause in the middle, pull out my phone and enter “millennialism” into my Google doc while trying not to elbow the person squeezed against me. It can slow my pace to a frustrating speed. (The Kindle, with its built-in lexicon, is much kinder). And then there’s the reviewing (which I frequently forget to do), conscientiously browsing through my growing word-hoard like I’m preparing for a word test.

In practice, I incorporate maybe 5% of these terms into my daily conversation. “Incorrigible” was adopted. “mournful” as well. But the majority of them stay like museum pieces – admired and listed but rarely handled.

Nevertheless, it’s made my thinking much keener. I find myself reaching less often for the same overused selection of adjectives, and more often for something precise and strong. Rarely are more gratifying than unearthing the exact term you were seeking – like finding the lost puzzle piece that locks the picture into place.

In an era when our gadgets siphon off our attention with relentless efficiency, it feels subversive to use mine as a tool for slow thought. And it has given me back something I feared I’d lost – the pleasure of engaging a intellect that, after years of slack scrolling, is finally waking up again.