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When I was a child, I devoured novels until my eyes blurred. When my exams came around, I exercised the endurance of a ascetic, revising for hours without a break. But in recent years, I’ve observed that ability for deep concentration fade into endless scrolling on my device. My attention span now shrinks like a snail at the touch of a thumb. Engaging with books for enjoyment seems less like nourishment and more like endurance training. And for someone who writes for a living, this is a professional hazard as well as something that left me disheartened. I aimed to regain that mental elasticity, to halt the mental decline.

Therefore, about a twelve months back, I made a small promise: every time I encountered a term I didn’t know – whether in a novel, an piece, or an overheard conversation – I would research it and record it. Nothing elaborate, no leather-bound journal or stylish pen. Just a running list kept, ironically, on my smartphone. Each seven days, I’d spend a few minutes reading the collection back in an attempt to lodge the word into my recall.

The record now spans almost 20 pages, and this tiny ritual has been subtly transformative. The benefit is less about showing off with obscure adjectives – which, to be honest, can make you sound unbearable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the ritual. Each time I look up and record a word, I feel a slight expansion, as though some neglected part of my mind is stirring again. Even if I never use “phantom” in conversation, the very act of spotting, logging and reviewing it breaks the slide into inactive, superficial focus.

Additionally, there's a diary-keeping element to it – it acts 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 inconvenient. If I’m reading on the tube, I have to stop mid-paragraph, take out my phone and enter “millennialism” into my digital document while trying not to bump the person squeezed 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), conscientiously browsing through my expanding word-hoard like I’m preparing for a vocabulary test.

Realistically, I incorporate maybe five percent of these words into my everyday speech. “Incorrigible” made the cut. “mournful” too. But most of them remain like exhibits – appreciated and listed but seldom used.

Nevertheless, it’s rendered my thinking much keener. I notice I'm reaching less often for the same tired handful of adjectives, and more frequently for something precise and muscular. Few things are more gratifying than unearthing the exact word you were seeking – like locating the lost component that locks the image into position.

At a time when our devices siphon off our focus with merciless efficiency, it feels rebellious to use mine as a tool for slow thinking. And it has given me back something I feared I’d forfeited – the joy of exercising a mind that, after a long time of slack scrolling, is finally stirring again.