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When I was a child, I consumed books until my vision blurred. When my exams came around, I exercised the endurance of a monk, studying for lengthy periods without a break. But in recent years, I’ve observed that ability for deep concentration dissolve into endless browsing on my phone. My attention span now shrinks like a slug at the tap of a thumb. Engaging with books for pleasure seems less like sustenance and more like a marathon. And for a person who creates content 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 brain rot.

Therefore, about a year ago, I made a small vow: every time I came across a term I didn’t understand – whether in a novel, an article, or an overheard conversation – I would look it up and record it. Not a thing fancy, no elegant notebook or stylish pen. Just a ongoing record kept, ironically, on my smartphone. Each seven days, I’d spend a few minutes reviewing the list back in an attempt to lodge the word into my memory.

The record now covers almost 20 pages, and this small ritual has been subtly transformative. The benefit is less about peacocking with obscure descriptors – which, to be honest, 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 slight expansion, as though some underused part of my brain is flexing again. Even if I never deploy “eidolon” in dialogue, the very process of noticing, logging and revising it interrupts the drift into passive, superficial attention.

There is also a journalling element to it – it functions 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.

It's not as if it’s an easy routine to keep up. It is often very inconvenient. If I’m engaged on the tube, I have to stop mid-paragraph, take out my phone and enter “millenarianism” into my Google doc while trying not to bump the person pressed against me. It can slow my reading to a maddening crawl. (The e-reader, with its integrated lexicon, is much kinder). And then there’s the revising (which I often neglect to do), conscientiously browsing through my growing vocabulary collection like I’m studying for a word test.

In practice, I integrate perhaps five percent of these words into my daily speech. “unreformable” was adopted. “Lugubrious” as well. But most of them stay like museum pieces – appreciated and listed but seldom handled.

Still, it’s rendered my mind much sharper. I find myself turning less frequently for the same tired 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 locating the missing component that locks the image into position.

In an era when our gadgets drain our focus with relentless efficiency, it feels rebellious to use my own as a instrument for deliberate thinking. And it has given me back something I worried I’d lost – the joy of engaging a intellect that, after years of slack browsing, is finally waking up again.