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When I was a child, I devoured novels until my eyes grew hazy. When my exams came around, I exercised the stamina of a ascetic, studying for hours without pause. But in lately, I’ve watched that capacity for deep focus fade into infinite scrolling on my phone. My focus now contracts like a snail at the tap of a finger. Engaging with books for enjoyment feels less like sustenance and more like a marathon. And for a person who writes for a profession, this is a occupational risk as well as something that left me disheartened. I wanted to restore that mental elasticity, to stop the mental decline.

Therefore, about a twelve months back, I made a modest vow: every time I came across a term I didn’t know – whether in a book, an article, or an casual discussion – I would look it up and write it down. Nothing fancy, no leather-bound journal or stylish pen. Just a ongoing record maintained, ironically, on my smartphone. Each week, I’d spend a few moments reading the collection back in an attempt to lodge the vocabulary into my recall.

The list now covers almost twenty sheets, and this small ritual has been quietly transformative. The payoff is less about peacocking with obscure adjectives – which, to be honest, can make you appear unbearable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the ritual. Each time I look up and record a term, I feel a slight expansion, as though some underused part of my brain is stirring again. Even if I never use “eidolon” in conversation, the very act of spotting, logging and reviewing it breaks the slide into passive, superficial attention.

Additionally, there's a journalling aspect to it – it functions as something of a journal, 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 simple habit to keep up. It is often very impractical. If I’m reading on the tube, I have to stop mid-paragraph, pull out my device and enter “millenarianism” into my Google doc while trying not to elbow the stranger squeezed 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 revising (which I frequently forget to do), conscientiously scrolling through my growing word-hoard like I’m preparing for a word test.

Realistically, I integrate perhaps five percent of these words into my daily conversation. “unreformable” was adopted. “mournful” too. But most of them remain like museum pieces – appreciated and listed but seldom handled.

Still, it’s rendered my thinking much sharper. I notice I'm turning less often for the same overused selection of descriptors, and more frequently for something precise and strong. Rarely are more gratifying than discovering the exact word you were searching for – like finding the missing component that locks the image into position.

In an era when our gadgets drain our focus with relentless effectiveness, it feels rebellious 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 exercising a intellect that, after a long time of lazy scrolling, is finally waking up again.