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When I was a child, I consumed books until my vision grew hazy. Once my GCSEs arrived, I exercised the endurance of a ascetic, revising for lengthy periods without pause. But in recent years, I’ve watched that capacity for deep concentration fade into infinite scrolling on my phone. My attention span now shrinks like a snail at the tap of a finger. Engaging with books for pleasure seems 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 aimed to regain that cognitive flexibility, to halt the brain rot.

So, about a year ago, I made a modest promise: every time I encountered a term I didn’t understand – whether in a novel, an article, or an casual discussion – I would look it up and record it. Nothing elaborate, no elegant notebook or stylish pen. Just a ongoing record kept, ironically, on my smartphone. Each seven days, I’d devote a few moments reviewing the collection back in an effort to imprint the word into my recall.

The list now spans almost 20 pages, 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 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 flexing again. Even if I never deploy “phantom” in dialogue, the very process of spotting, documenting and revising it interrupts the slide into passive, semi-skimmed attention.

There is also a diary-keeping aspect to it – it functions as something of a journal, a record 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 simple routine to keep up. It is often extremely impractical. If I’m engaged on the subway, I have to stop in the middle, take out my phone and type “millennialism” into my Google doc while trying not to elbow the stranger squeezed against me. It can reduce my reading to a maddening speed. (The Kindle, with its built-in lexicon, is much easier). And then there’s the revising (which I often forget to do), conscientiously scrolling through my expanding vocabulary collection like I’m preparing for a word test.

Realistically, I incorporate maybe five percent of these terms into my everyday speech. “Incorrigible” was adopted. “mournful” as well. But most of them stay like exhibits – appreciated and listed but seldom handled.

Still, it’s made my thinking much sharper. I find myself reaching less often for the same overused selection of descriptors, and more often for something exact and muscular. Rarely are more satisfying than unearthing the exact word you were seeking – like locating the lost component that locks the picture into position.

In an era when our devices drain our attention with relentless effectiveness, it feels subversive to use my own as a instrument for slow thinking. And it has given me back something I worried I’d forfeited – the pleasure of exercising a mind that, after years of lazy scrolling, is finally waking up again.