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As a youngster, I consumed books until my vision grew hazy. Once my GCSEs came around, I demonstrated the stamina of a ascetic, revising for lengthy periods without a break. But in recent years, I’ve observed that ability for intense focus fade into endless scrolling on my device. My attention span now shrinks like a slug at the touch of a finger. Engaging with books for enjoyment seems less like sustenance and more like a marathon. And for a person who creates content for a profession, this is a occupational risk as well as something that made me sad. I wanted to regain that cognitive flexibility, to halt the mental decline.

Therefore, about a year ago, I made a modest vow: every time I came across a term I didn’t understand – whether in a book, an piece, or an overheard discussion – I would look it up and record it. Nothing fancy, no leather-bound journal or fountain pen. Just a running list maintained, amusingly, on my smartphone. Each week, I’d spend a few moments reviewing the collection back in an effort to imprint the word into my memory.

The list now spans almost twenty sheets, and this small ritual has been quietly life-changing. The benefit is less about showing off 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 note a word, I feel a slight stretch, as though some neglected part of my mind is flexing again. Even if I never deploy “phantom” in conversation, the very process of spotting, logging and reviewing it breaks the slide into inactive, semi-skimmed focus.

There is also a journalling element to it – it functions as something of a diary, a record of where I’ve been engaging, what I’ve been pondering and who I’ve been hearing.

Not that it’s an easy habit to keep up. It is frequently extremely impractical. If I’m reading on the tube, I have to pause in the middle, pull out my device 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 crawl. (The Kindle, with its built-in lexicon, is much kinder). And then there’s the reviewing (which I often neglect to do), conscientiously scrolling through my growing word-hoard like I’m studying for a word test.

In practice, I incorporate maybe 5% of these terms into my everyday speech. “Incorrigible” was adopted. “Lugubrious” too. But most of them stay like museum pieces – appreciated and listed but rarely used.

Nevertheless, it’s made my thinking much sharper. I notice I'm turning less frequently for the same overused selection of adjectives, and more often for something exact and muscular. Few things are more gratifying than unearthing the exact word you were searching for – like locating the missing puzzle piece that snaps the image into place.

In an era when our gadgets siphon off our focus with merciless efficiency, it feels subversive to use my own as a instrument for slow thinking. And it has restored to me something I worried I’d forfeited – the joy of exercising a intellect that, after a long time of lazy browsing, is at last waking up again.