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As a youngster, I devoured books until my vision grew hazy. When my GCSEs came around, I demonstrated the endurance of a monk, revising for hours without pause. But in recent years, I’ve observed that capacity for deep focus fade into infinite scrolling on my device. My attention span now contracts like a snail at the touch of a finger. Reading for pleasure feels less like nourishment and more like a marathon. And for a person who creates content for a living, this is a occupational risk as well as something that left me disheartened. I aimed to regain that cognitive flexibility, to stop the mental decline.

So, about a twelve months back, I made a modest promise: every time I encountered a word I didn’t know – whether in a novel, an article, or an casual conversation – I would research it and write it down. Nothing fancy, no elegant notebook or stylish pen. Just a running list maintained, ironically, on my phone. Each week, I’d devote a few minutes reading the collection back in an effort to imprint the vocabulary into my recall.

The list now spans almost 20 pages, and this small ritual has been quietly transformative. The benefit is less about showing off with obscure adjectives – 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 record a word, I feel a slight expansion, as though some neglected part of my brain is flexing again. Even if I never use “eidolon” in dialogue, the very process of spotting, logging and revising it breaks the drift into passive, semi-skimmed focus.

Additionally, there's a diary-keeping aspect to it – it acts as something of a journal, a log of where I’ve been reading, what I’ve been thinking about and who I’ve been listening to.

Not that it’s an easy routine to keep up. It is frequently extremely impractical. If I’m reading on the subway, I have to stop in the middle, pull out my phone and type “millenarianism” into my Google doc while trying not to elbow the person squeezed against me. It can reduce my reading to a frustrating crawl. (The Kindle, with its built-in dictionary, is much easier). And then there’s the revising (which I often forget to do), conscientiously scrolling through my expanding vocabulary collection like I’m preparing for a vocabulary test.

Realistically, I incorporate maybe five percent of these terms into my daily conversation. “Incorrigible” was adopted. “Lugubrious” too. But most of them stay like exhibits – appreciated and catalogued but rarely handled.

Nevertheless, it’s rendered my mind much keener. I find myself reaching less frequently for the same overused selection of adjectives, and more frequently for something exact and strong. Rarely are more satisfying than unearthing the perfect term you were seeking – like finding the missing puzzle piece that locks the picture into place.

In an era when our devices drain our focus with relentless effectiveness, it feels rebellious to use my own as a tool for slow thought. And it has restored to me something I worried I’d lost – the pleasure of exercising a intellect that, after years of lazy scrolling, is finally waking up again.