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When I was a child, I devoured novels until my vision blurred. When my exams arrived, I exercised the endurance of a ascetic, revising for lengthy periods without a break. But in lately, I’ve observed that capacity for deep concentration fade into infinite browsing on my device. My attention span now contracts like a slug at the tap of a thumb. Reading for pleasure seems less like nourishment and more like a marathon. And for a person who creates content for a living, this is a occupational risk as well as something that left me disheartened. I aimed to regain that cognitive flexibility, to halt the brain rot.

Therefore, about a twelve months back, I made a modest vow: every time I encountered a word I didn’t understand – whether in a novel, an piece, or an casual conversation – I would look it up and record it. Nothing fancy, no leather-bound journal or fountain pen. Just a ongoing record kept, amusingly, on my smartphone. Each seven days, I’d spend a few moments reading the collection back in an attempt to imprint the word into my memory.

The record now spans almost twenty sheets, and this tiny habit has been subtly life-changing. The payoff is less about peacocking with uncommon 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 note a word, I feel a slight stretch, as though some neglected part of my brain is stirring again. Even if I never use “phantom” in dialogue, the very process of spotting, logging and reviewing it interrupts the drift into passive, semi-skimmed focus.

There is also a diary-keeping aspect to it – it acts as something of a diary, a record 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 very inconvenient. If I’m reading on the subway, I have to stop in the middle, 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 crawl. (The Kindle, with its built-in dictionary, is much kinder). And then there’s the reviewing (which I frequently forget to do), dutifully scrolling through my growing word-hoard like I’m studying for a vocabulary test.

Realistically, I integrate maybe 5% of these terms into my daily speech. “unreformable” was adopted. “Lugubrious” as well. But most of them remain like museum pieces – appreciated and catalogued but rarely handled.

Still, it’s made my thinking much keener. I notice I'm turning less often for the same overused selection of descriptors, and more frequently for something precise and muscular. Few things are more gratifying than unearthing the perfect term you were searching for – like finding the missing puzzle piece that locks the picture into place.

In an era when our gadgets siphon off our attention with relentless efficiency, it feels rebellious to use my own as a tool for deliberate thought. And it has given me back something I worried I’d forfeited – the pleasure of engaging a mind that, after years of lazy scrolling, is at last stirring again.