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As a child, I devoured books until my eyes blurred. Once my GCSEs came around, I exercised the stamina of a monk, studying for lengthy periods without pause. But in recent years, I’ve observed that ability for intense focus fade into infinite scrolling on my phone. My attention span now contracts like a snail at the touch of a thumb. Reading for pleasure feels less like sustenance and more like endurance training. And for a person who writes for a living, 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 year ago, I made a small promise: every time I encountered a word I didn’t understand – whether in a book, an piece, or an casual conversation – I would research it and record it. Nothing elaborate, no elegant notebook or fountain pen. Just a ongoing record maintained, ironically, on my smartphone. Each seven days, I’d devote a few minutes reviewing the collection back in an attempt to imprint the word into my memory.

The list now spans almost 20 pages, and this tiny habit has been quietly transformative. The benefit is less about showing off with uncommon adjectives – which, let’s face it, can make you appear insufferable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the ritual. Each time I search for and record a word, I feel a faint 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, logging and revising it interrupts the drift into passive, superficial focus.

Additionally, there's a journalling element to it – it acts as something of a diary, a log of where I’ve been reading, what I’ve been pondering and who I’ve been listening to.

Not that it’s an simple habit to keep up. It is often very inconvenient. If I’m reading on the tube, I have to stop in the middle, take out my phone and enter “millennialism” into my Google doc while trying not to elbow the person pressed against me. It can reduce my pace to a maddening speed. (The e-reader, 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 studying for a word test.

In practice, I integrate maybe 5% of these words into my daily speech. “Incorrigible” made the cut. “mournful” too. But the majority of them remain like exhibits – appreciated and listed but seldom handled.

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

In an era when our gadgets drain our attention with relentless effectiveness, it feels subversive to use mine as a tool for slow thinking. And it has given me back something I worried I’d lost – the joy of engaging a intellect that, after years of slack scrolling, is at last waking up again.