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As a child, I devoured novels until my vision blurred. Once my GCSEs came around, I demonstrated the endurance of a monk, revising for hours without a break. But in recent years, I’ve watched that ability for intense focus dissolve into infinite scrolling on my device. 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 writes for a living, this is a professional hazard as well as something that made me sad. I aimed to restore that mental elasticity, to halt the mental decline.

So, about a twelve months back, I made a modest vow: every time I encountered a term I didn’t know – whether in a book, an article, or an overheard discussion – I would research it and record it. Not a thing fancy, no elegant notebook or stylish pen. Just a ongoing record kept, amusingly, on my smartphone. Each seven days, I’d devote a few moments reading the list back in an attempt to lodge the vocabulary into my recall.

The list now spans almost 20 pages, and this small ritual has been subtly life-changing. The benefit is less about showing off with obscure adjectives – which, to be honest, can make you appear insufferable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the practice. Each time I search for and record a word, I feel a faint stretch, as though some underused part of my brain is flexing again. Even if I never deploy “phantom” in dialogue, the very process of noticing, logging and reviewing it interrupts the slide into inactive, superficial focus.

Additionally, there's a journalling 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.

It's not as if it’s an simple routine to keep up. It is frequently extremely impractical. If I’m engaged on the tube, I have to pause mid-paragraph, take out my phone and enter “millennialism” into my Google doc while trying not to bump the person pressed 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 revising (which I frequently forget to do), dutifully scrolling through my growing vocabulary collection like I’m studying for a word test.

In practice, I integrate maybe five percent of these terms into my everyday conversation. “unreformable” was adopted. “Lugubrious” too. But the majority of them remain like exhibits – admired and listed but rarely handled.

Nevertheless, it’s made my thinking much sharper. I notice I'm turning less often for the same tired handful of adjectives, and more frequently for something precise and strong. Rarely are more gratifying than discovering the perfect word you were seeking – like locating the lost component that snaps the picture into position.

At a time when our devices drain our focus with relentless effectiveness, it feels rebellious to use my own as a tool for slow thinking. And it has restored to me something I feared I’d forfeited – the pleasure of exercising a intellect that, after a long time of slack scrolling, is at last waking up again.