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As a youngster, I devoured novels until my vision grew hazy. Once my GCSEs came around, I demonstrated the endurance of a monk, revising for lengthy periods without pause. But in recent years, I’ve watched that ability for deep concentration fade into endless browsing on my phone. My focus now contracts like a slug at the tap of a thumb. Engaging with books for pleasure seems less like nourishment and more like endurance training. And for someone who writes for a profession, this is a occupational risk as well as something that left me disheartened. I aimed to restore that cognitive flexibility, to halt the mental decline.

Therefore, about a twelve months back, I made a modest vow: every time I came across a term I didn’t understand – whether in a novel, an article, or an overheard discussion – I would research it and write it down. Not a thing fancy, no elegant notebook or stylish pen. Just a ongoing record kept, amusingly, on my smartphone. Each week, I’d spend a few moments reviewing the list back in an effort to imprint the vocabulary into my memory.

The record now spans 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 sound unbearable – and more about the cognitive exercise of the ritual. Each time I look up and note a word, I feel a slight stretch, as though some neglected part of my brain is stirring again. Even if I never deploy “eidolon” in conversation, the very act of noticing, documenting and reviewing it interrupts the drift into passive, semi-skimmed focus.

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

Not that it’s an easy routine to maintain. It is frequently very impractical. If I’m engaged on the subway, I have to stop mid-paragraph, pull out my phone and type “millennialism” into my digital document while trying not to elbow the person pressed against me. It can slow my reading to a maddening speed. (The e-reader, with its integrated dictionary, is much easier). And then there’s the revising (which I often neglect to do), conscientiously scrolling through my expanding word-hoard like I’m preparing for a vocabulary test.

In practice, I incorporate perhaps five percent of these words into my everyday speech. “unreformable” made the cut. “mournful” as well. But most of them stay like museum pieces – admired and listed but rarely used.

Still, it’s rendered my mind much sharper. I find myself turning less frequently for the same overused selection of adjectives, and more frequently for something precise and muscular. Rarely are more gratifying than unearthing the perfect term you were seeking – like locating the missing component that locks the image into place.

In an era when our devices siphon off our focus with merciless effectiveness, it feels subversive to use my own as a tool for slow thought. And it has given me back something I feared I’d forfeited – the pleasure of engaging a mind that, after years of lazy scrolling, is finally waking up again.