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As a youngster, I consumed books until my vision grew hazy. Once my exams arrived, I demonstrated the stamina of a monk, revising for lengthy periods without a break. But in recent years, I’ve watched that ability for deep concentration fade into endless scrolling on my phone. My attention span now contracts like a slug at the touch of a finger. Reading for enjoyment feels less like nourishment and more like endurance training. And for someone 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.

Therefore, about a year ago, I made a small promise: every time I came across a term I didn’t know – whether in a novel, an article, or an overheard discussion – I would look it up and write it down. Not a thing elaborate, no leather-bound journal or fountain pen. Just a running list kept, amusingly, on my phone. Each seven days, I’d spend a few moments reading the collection back in an effort to lodge the vocabulary into my recall.

The record now covers almost 20 pages, and this small ritual has been quietly transformative. The payoff is less about peacocking with obscure descriptors – which, let’s face it, can make you appear insufferable – and more about the cognitive exercise of the practice. Each time I look up and note a word, I feel a slight expansion, as though some underused part of my mind is flexing again. Even if I never use “phantom” in dialogue, the very act of spotting, documenting and reviewing it breaks the slide into passive, semi-skimmed focus.

Additionally, there's a diary-keeping element to it – it acts as something of a journal, a record of where I’ve been reading, what I’ve been pondering and who I’ve been hearing.

It's not as if it’s an simple routine to keep up. It is often very inconvenient. If I’m reading on the subway, I have to pause in the middle, pull out my device and enter “millenarianism” into my digital document while trying not to elbow the stranger pressed against me. It can reduce my pace to a maddening speed. (The Kindle, with its built-in lexicon, is much kinder). And then there’s the revising (which I frequently forget to do), conscientiously browsing through my growing vocabulary collection like I’m preparing for a vocabulary test.

In practice, I incorporate maybe 5% of these words into my everyday conversation. “unreformable” was adopted. “Lugubrious” too. But the majority of them remain like exhibits – admired and listed but rarely used.

Still, it’s rendered my mind much sharper. I notice I'm turning less often for the same overused selection of adjectives, and more frequently for something exact and strong. Few things are more satisfying than unearthing the perfect term you were searching for – like finding the lost component that snaps the picture into position.

In an era when our devices drain our attention with merciless efficiency, it feels rebellious to use mine as a instrument for deliberate thought. And it has restored to me something I worried I’d lost – the joy of exercising a intellect that, after a long time of slack scrolling, is finally waking up again.