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When I was a child, I consumed novels until my eyes blurred. When my exams arrived, I demonstrated the stamina of a ascetic, revising for hours without pause. But in lately, I’ve observed that capacity for intense concentration fade into endless browsing on my device. My focus now contracts like a slug at the tap of a finger. Reading for enjoyment feels less like sustenance and more like endurance training. And for a person who creates content for a profession, this is a occupational risk as well as something that left me disheartened. I aimed to restore that mental elasticity, to halt the mental decline.

So, about a twelve months back, I made a small vow: every time I came across a term I didn’t know – whether in a novel, an piece, or an casual discussion – I would look it up and write it down. Nothing fancy, no elegant notebook or fountain pen. Just a running list kept, ironically, on my smartphone. Each seven days, I’d spend a few minutes reading the list back in an attempt to imprint the word into my memory.

The list now spans almost twenty sheets, and this tiny ritual has been subtly transformative. The payoff is less about showing off with uncommon adjectives – which, to be honest, can make you appear insufferable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the practice. Each time I look up and note a term, I feel a slight stretch, as though some neglected part of my brain is flexing again. Even if I never use “eidolon” in conversation, the very process of noticing, logging and revising it interrupts the slide into passive, superficial focus.

There is also a diary-keeping element to it – it acts as something of a journal, a record of where I’ve been reading, what I’ve been thinking about and who I’ve been listening to.

Not that it’s an simple routine to keep up. It is frequently very inconvenient. If I’m engaged on the tube, I have to pause mid-paragraph, pull out my phone and enter “millenarianism” into my digital document while trying not to elbow the stranger pressed against me. It can slow my pace to a maddening crawl. (The e-reader, with its built-in lexicon, is much kinder). And then there’s the revising (which I frequently neglect to do), conscientiously scrolling through my growing vocabulary collection like I’m preparing for a vocabulary test.

Realistically, I integrate maybe five percent of these terms into my daily conversation. “Incorrigible” was adopted. “Lugubrious” as well. But the majority of them stay like museum pieces – appreciated and listed but rarely handled.

Still, it’s rendered my mind much sharper. I find myself turning less often for the same tired handful of adjectives, and more frequently for something exact and muscular. Rarely are more satisfying than discovering the perfect term you were seeking – like finding the lost component that locks the image into position.

At a time when our devices siphon off our attention with merciless efficiency, it feels subversive to use mine as a tool for deliberate thinking. And it has given me back something I feared I’d lost – the joy of exercising a mind that, after years of slack browsing, is finally stirring again.