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When I was a youngster, I devoured books until my vision blurred. Once my exams came around, I exercised the stamina of a ascetic, studying for hours without pause. But in lately, I’ve observed that capacity for intense focus dissolve into endless scrolling on my device. My attention span now contracts like a snail at the touch of a finger. Reading for enjoyment 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 regain that cognitive flexibility, to stop the brain rot.

So, about a twelve months back, I made a modest vow: every time I encountered a word I didn’t know – whether in a book, an article, 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 maintained, ironically, on my phone. Each week, I’d devote a few minutes reviewing the collection back in an attempt to lodge the vocabulary into my recall.

The list now spans almost twenty sheets, and this tiny habit has been quietly transformative. The benefit is less about showing off with uncommon descriptors – which, let’s face it, can make you appear insufferable – and more about the cognitive exercise of the practice. Each time I search for and note a word, I feel a faint expansion, as though some neglected part of my mind is stirring again. Even if I never use “eidolon” in dialogue, the very act of noticing, logging and revising it interrupts the slide into passive, semi-skimmed focus.

There is also a journalling aspect to it – it acts as something of a journal, a record of where I’ve been engaging, what I’ve been thinking about and who I’ve been hearing.

Not that it’s an simple routine to maintain. It is often extremely impractical. If I’m reading on the tube, I have to stop mid-paragraph, pull out my phone and enter “millenarianism” into my Google doc while trying not to bump the stranger pressed against me. It can reduce my reading to a frustrating crawl. (The e-reader, with its integrated lexicon, is much easier). And then there’s the reviewing (which I frequently neglect to do), dutifully scrolling through my growing vocabulary collection like I’m preparing for a vocabulary test.

Realistically, I incorporate perhaps 5% of these words into my everyday conversation. “Incorrigible” was adopted. “Lugubrious” too. But most of them remain like exhibits – appreciated and listed but seldom handled.

Nevertheless, it’s rendered my thinking much sharper. I notice I'm turning less frequently for the same tired selection of adjectives, and more often for something exact and strong. Few things are more satisfying than unearthing the perfect word you were seeking – like locating the lost puzzle piece that locks the image into place.

In an era when our gadgets drain our focus with relentless efficiency, it feels rebellious to use mine as a tool for deliberate thinking. And it has restored to me something I worried I’d lost – the pleasure of exercising a mind that, after a long time of slack browsing, is finally waking up again.