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When I was a child, I consumed books until my eyes blurred. Once my exams came around, I demonstrated the endurance of a ascetic, studying for hours without a break. But in lately, I’ve observed that capacity for deep concentration fade into endless browsing on my phone. My attention span now contracts like a snail at the touch of a finger. Engaging with books for enjoyment seems less like sustenance and more like endurance training. And for a person who writes for a living, this is a professional hazard as well as something that left me disheartened. I aimed to restore 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 research it and write it down. Not a thing fancy, no elegant notebook or fountain pen. Just a running list maintained, amusingly, on my smartphone. Each seven days, I’d devote a few moments reviewing the list back in an attempt to imprint the word into my recall.

The list now covers almost twenty sheets, and this tiny habit has been quietly life-changing. The benefit 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 ritual. Each time I search for and record a term, I feel a slight expansion, as though some underused part of my brain is flexing again. Even if I never use “eidolon” in conversation, the very act of noticing, documenting and revising it interrupts the drift into inactive, semi-skimmed focus.

Additionally, there's a diary-keeping 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.

It's not as if it’s an simple habit to maintain. It is often very inconvenient. If I’m reading on the tube, I have to pause in the middle, pull out my device and enter “millenarianism” into my digital document while trying not to bump the person squeezed against me. It can slow my reading to a maddening speed. (The e-reader, with its built-in lexicon, is much kinder). And then there’s the reviewing (which I often forget to do), dutifully scrolling through my expanding vocabulary collection like I’m preparing for a vocabulary test.

Realistically, I integrate maybe 5% of these words into my daily speech. “unreformable” made the cut. “mournful” as well. But the majority of them stay like museum pieces – appreciated and catalogued but seldom handled.

Still, it’s rendered my mind much keener. I find myself reaching less frequently for the same overused selection of descriptors, and more often for something precise and strong. Rarely are more gratifying than unearthing the perfect term you were seeking – like locating the lost puzzle piece that locks the image into position.

In an era when our gadgets siphon off our focus with merciless effectiveness, it feels rebellious to use my own as a tool for deliberate thought. And it has given me back something I worried I’d lost – the pleasure of engaging a mind that, after years of slack browsing, is at last waking up again.