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When I was a child, I devoured novels until my eyes blurred. When my exams came around, I demonstrated the stamina of a ascetic, revising for hours without pause. But in lately, I’ve watched that capacity for deep focus dissolve into infinite scrolling on my device. My focus now shrinks like a slug at the touch of a finger. Reading for enjoyment feels less like nourishment and more like a marathon. And for someone who creates content for a profession, this is a occupational risk as well as something that made me sad. I wanted to regain that mental elasticity, to stop the mental decline.

So, about a year ago, I made a modest promise: every time I came across a term I didn’t understand – whether in a book, an article, or an casual conversation – I would research it and write it down. Nothing elaborate, no leather-bound journal or fountain pen. Just a ongoing record maintained, amusingly, on my phone. Each week, I’d spend a few moments reviewing the list back in an effort to imprint the word into my recall.

The list now covers almost twenty sheets, and this small habit has been subtly transformative. The benefit is less about peacocking with uncommon adjectives – which, let’s face it, can make you sound insufferable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the ritual. Each time I search for and record a term, I feel a slight expansion, as though some neglected part of my mind is flexing again. Even if I never deploy “eidolon” in conversation, the very process of spotting, logging and revising it breaks the drift into inactive, superficial focus.

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

Not that it’s an easy habit to keep up. It is often extremely impractical. If I’m engaged on the tube, I have to stop in the middle, pull out my phone and enter “millennialism” into my digital document while trying not to elbow the person squeezed against me. It can reduce my pace to a maddening crawl. (The Kindle, with its integrated dictionary, is much easier). And then there’s the reviewing (which I frequently forget to do), dutifully scrolling through my expanding vocabulary collection like I’m preparing for a word test.

Realistically, I integrate maybe 5% of these words into my everyday conversation. “Incorrigible” was adopted. “mournful” as well. But most of them stay like exhibits – admired and listed but rarely used.

Nevertheless, it’s rendered my thinking much sharper. I notice I'm turning less frequently for the same overused selection of descriptors, and more often for something exact and muscular. Rarely are more satisfying than discovering the perfect term you were searching for – like finding the lost puzzle piece that snaps the picture into position.

At a time when our gadgets siphon off our attention with merciless efficiency, it feels rebellious to use mine as a instrument for deliberate thinking. And it has given me back something I worried I’d lost – the pleasure of exercising a intellect that, after a long time of lazy scrolling, is finally stirring again.