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When I was a child, I devoured novels until my vision blurred. Once my exams came around, I exercised the endurance of a ascetic, studying for lengthy periods without pause. But in recent years, I’ve watched that ability for intense focus fade into endless browsing on my device. My attention span now contracts like a slug at the tap of a thumb. Reading for pleasure seems less like nourishment and more like endurance training. And for someone who writes for a living, this is a occupational risk as well as something that made me sad. I wanted to regain that cognitive flexibility, to halt the brain rot.

Therefore, about a twelve months back, I made a small vow: every time I encountered a term I didn’t know – whether in a novel, an piece, or an casual conversation – I would look it up and record it. Not a thing elaborate, no leather-bound journal or stylish pen. Just a running list maintained, ironically, on my phone. Each seven days, I’d spend a few moments reading the collection back in an effort to lodge the word into my recall.

The record now covers almost twenty sheets, 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 look up and record a term, I feel a faint expansion, as though some underused part of my mind is flexing again. Even if I never use “eidolon” in conversation, the very process of noticing, logging and reviewing it breaks the drift into inactive, superficial attention.

There is also a diary-keeping aspect to it – it acts as something of a journal, a record of where I’ve been engaging, what I’ve been thinking about and who I’ve been listening to.

It's not as if it’s an simple routine to maintain. It is frequently extremely 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 bump the stranger pressed against me. It can reduce my reading to a maddening speed. (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 studying for a vocabulary test.

Realistically, I incorporate maybe 5% of these words into my daily speech. “unreformable” was adopted. “Lugubrious” as well. But most of them stay like exhibits – appreciated and listed but seldom handled.

Nevertheless, it’s rendered my thinking much sharper. I find myself turning less frequently for the same overused handful of descriptors, and more often for something precise and muscular. Few things are more satisfying than unearthing the perfect word you were searching for – like finding the lost puzzle piece that snaps the image into position.

At a time when our devices drain our attention with merciless effectiveness, it feels subversive to use mine as a tool for deliberate thinking. And it has given me back something I feared I’d lost – the joy of engaging a mind that, after a long time of slack scrolling, is at last stirring again.