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When I was a child, I devoured books until my eyes grew hazy. When my GCSEs arrived, I demonstrated the endurance of a monk, revising for lengthy periods without pause. But in lately, I’ve watched that ability for deep concentration fade into endless scrolling on my phone. My focus now shrinks like a snail at the touch of a thumb. Reading for enjoyment seems less like nourishment and more like endurance training. And for someone who creates content for a profession, this is a professional hazard as well as something that left me disheartened. I aimed to restore that cognitive flexibility, to halt the mental decline.

Therefore, about a twelve months back, I made a modest promise: every time I came across a term I didn’t know – whether in a book, an article, or an overheard discussion – I would research it and write it down. Nothing fancy, no elegant notebook or stylish pen. Just a running list kept, ironically, on my phone. Each week, I’d devote a few moments reviewing the list back in an effort to lodge the word into my memory.

The record now spans almost twenty sheets, and this tiny ritual has been subtly life-changing. The benefit is less about showing off with obscure adjectives – which, let’s face it, can make you sound unbearable – and more about the cognitive exercise of the ritual. Each time I look up and record a word, I feel a slight stretch, as though some underused part of my mind is stirring again. Even if I never deploy “eidolon” in conversation, the very process of spotting, logging and revising it interrupts the drift into passive, superficial focus.

Additionally, there's a journalling aspect to it – it acts as something of a diary, a log 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 easy routine to maintain. It is often very inconvenient. If I’m engaged on the tube, I have to pause mid-paragraph, pull out my phone and type “millennialism” into my digital document while trying not to bump the stranger squeezed against me. It can slow my pace to a frustrating crawl. (The Kindle, with its built-in lexicon, is much kinder). And then there’s the reviewing (which I often neglect to do), conscientiously browsing through my growing vocabulary collection like I’m studying for a vocabulary test.

In practice, I incorporate perhaps 5% of these words into my everyday speech. “Incorrigible” was adopted. “Lugubrious” as well. But the majority of them remain like exhibits – admired and listed but rarely used.

Still, 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 precise and strong. Few things are more satisfying than unearthing the exact term you were searching for – like locating the lost component that locks the image into place.

At a time when our devices siphon off our attention with relentless effectiveness, it feels subversive to use my own as a tool for slow thinking. And it has given me back something I feared I’d forfeited – the joy of exercising a intellect that, after years of slack scrolling, is finally waking up again.