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As a child, I devoured novels until my vision grew hazy. Once my GCSEs came around, I demonstrated the endurance of a ascetic, studying for hours without a break. But in recent years, I’ve observed that capacity for deep focus dissolve into endless browsing on my phone. My focus now contracts like a slug at the tap of a thumb. Engaging with books for pleasure feels less like sustenance and more like a marathon. And for a person who creates content for a profession, this is a professional hazard as well as something that left me disheartened. I aimed to regain that cognitive flexibility, to halt the brain rot.

So, about a year ago, I made a modest vow: every time I encountered a term I didn’t know – whether in a novel, an piece, or an casual discussion – I would research it and record it. Not a thing elaborate, no elegant notebook or fountain pen. Just a ongoing record maintained, amusingly, on my phone. Each week, I’d spend a few moments reading the list back in an attempt to lodge the word into my recall.

The list now spans almost twenty sheets, and this small habit has been quietly life-changing. The benefit is less about showing off with obscure adjectives – which, to be honest, can make you sound unbearable – and more about the cognitive exercise of the ritual. Each time I search for and note a word, I feel a slight expansion, as though some underused part of my mind is flexing again. Even if I never deploy “phantom” in dialogue, the very act of spotting, logging and reviewing it breaks the slide into inactive, semi-skimmed attention.

There is also a journalling element to it – it acts as something of a diary, a record of where I’ve been engaging, what I’ve been pondering and who I’ve been listening to.

It's not as if it’s an simple habit to keep up. It is often extremely inconvenient. If I’m reading on the subway, I have to stop in the middle, pull out my phone and type “millenarianism” into my Google doc while trying not to bump the stranger squeezed against me. It can reduce my pace to a frustrating speed. (The Kindle, with its built-in dictionary, is much easier). And then there’s the reviewing (which I often neglect to do), conscientiously browsing through my growing word-hoard like I’m studying for a word test.

In practice, I integrate maybe five percent of these words into my everyday speech. “Incorrigible” was adopted. “mournful” as well. But most of them stay like exhibits – admired and catalogued but seldom used.

Still, it’s rendered my thinking much sharper. I notice I'm turning less often for the same overused selection of adjectives, and more frequently for something exact and strong. Few things are more satisfying than unearthing the perfect word you were seeking – like locating the missing puzzle piece that locks the picture into position.

At a time when our gadgets siphon off our attention with relentless efficiency, it feels subversive to use mine as a tool for slow thinking. And it has given me back something I feared I’d forfeited – the pleasure of engaging a mind that, after a long time of lazy browsing, is finally stirring again.