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When I was a youngster, I consumed novels until my eyes grew hazy. Once my GCSEs arrived, I exercised the endurance of a ascetic, studying for hours without pause. But in lately, I’ve watched that ability for deep concentration fade into infinite browsing on my device. My attention span now shrinks like a slug at the tap of a finger. Engaging with books for pleasure seems less like sustenance and more like endurance training. And for someone who writes for a living, this is a professional hazard as well as something that left me disheartened. I wanted to regain that cognitive flexibility, to stop the mental decline.

So, about a year ago, I made a small promise: every time I encountered a word I didn’t know – whether in a book, an article, or an overheard conversation – I would look it up and write it down. Not a thing elaborate, no leather-bound journal or stylish pen. Just a ongoing record maintained, amusingly, on my phone. Each week, I’d devote a few minutes reviewing the collection back in an effort to lodge the word into my memory.

The list now spans almost twenty sheets, and this tiny ritual has been subtly life-changing. The benefit is less about peacocking with uncommon descriptors – which, to be honest, can make you sound insufferable – and more about the cognitive exercise of the ritual. Each time I look up and record a word, I feel a slight expansion, as though some underused part of my brain is flexing again. Even if I never use “phantom” in conversation, the very act of spotting, documenting and reviewing it breaks the slide into inactive, superficial attention.

Additionally, there's a diary-keeping element 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 listening to.

Not that it’s an easy habit to maintain. It is often extremely inconvenient. If I’m reading on the tube, I have to pause in the middle, take out my phone and enter “millenarianism” into my Google doc while trying not to elbow the person squeezed against me. It can slow my pace to a maddening crawl. (The Kindle, with its built-in dictionary, is much easier). And then there’s the reviewing (which I frequently forget to do), conscientiously browsing through my growing vocabulary collection like I’m studying for a word test.

In practice, I incorporate perhaps five percent of these terms into my daily speech. “unreformable” made the cut. “Lugubrious” as well. But the majority of them remain like exhibits – appreciated and catalogued but seldom handled.

Still, it’s made my mind much sharper. I notice I'm turning less often for the same overused selection of descriptors, and more often for something precise and muscular. Rarely are more gratifying than unearthing the exact word you were seeking – like finding the lost puzzle piece that locks the picture into position.

At a time when our gadgets drain our attention with relentless effectiveness, it feels rebellious to use my own as a instrument for deliberate thinking. And it has given me back something I worried I’d lost – the pleasure of exercising a intellect that, after years of slack scrolling, is at last stirring again.