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When I was a child, I consumed novels until my eyes grew hazy. When my GCSEs came around, I exercised the endurance of a monk, revising for lengthy periods without pause. But in lately, I’ve watched that capacity for intense concentration dissolve into endless browsing on my phone. My attention span now contracts like a slug at the tap of a finger. Reading for enjoyment feels less like sustenance and more like a marathon. And for a person who creates content for a profession, this is a occupational risk as well as something that made me sad. I wanted to regain that cognitive flexibility, to stop the brain rot.

Therefore, about a year ago, I made a small vow: every time I encountered a word I didn’t understand – whether in a novel, an article, or an overheard conversation – I would look it up and write it down. Not a thing elaborate, no elegant notebook or stylish pen. Just a ongoing record maintained, amusingly, on my phone. Each seven days, I’d spend a few minutes reading the list back in an effort to imprint the word into my memory.

The record now covers almost 20 pages, and this small habit has been quietly life-changing. The benefit is less about peacocking with obscure descriptors – which, let’s face it, can make you sound insufferable – and more about the cognitive exercise of the ritual. Each time I search for and record a word, I feel a faint stretch, as though some neglected part of my brain is stirring again. Even if I never use “eidolon” in conversation, the very act of spotting, logging and revising it interrupts the slide into inactive, semi-skimmed attention.

Additionally, there's a journalling element to it – it functions as something of a journal, a log of where I’ve been reading, what I’ve been thinking about and who I’ve been hearing.

It's not as if it’s an easy routine to maintain. It is often very inconvenient. If I’m reading on the tube, I have to stop in the middle, pull out my phone and enter “millenarianism” into my digital document while trying not to bump the stranger squeezed against me. It can reduce my reading to a frustrating speed. (The Kindle, with its built-in dictionary, is much easier). And then there’s the revising (which I frequently neglect to do), dutifully scrolling through my growing vocabulary collection like I’m preparing for a word test.

Realistically, I integrate perhaps five percent of these terms into my daily speech. “Incorrigible” made the cut. “Lugubrious” too. But the majority of them remain like exhibits – admired and catalogued but rarely used.

Still, it’s rendered my mind much sharper. I find myself reaching less frequently for the same tired handful of adjectives, and more frequently for something precise and muscular. Few things are more gratifying than discovering the perfect word you were seeking – like finding the missing component that snaps the image into position.

In an era when our gadgets drain our attention with relentless effectiveness, it feels subversive to use mine as a instrument for deliberate thought. And it has restored to me something I feared I’d lost – the pleasure of exercising a mind that, after a long time of lazy browsing, is at last waking up again.