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As a child, I consumed books until my eyes blurred. When my GCSEs came around, I demonstrated the endurance of a ascetic, revising for lengthy periods without a break. But in lately, I’ve watched that capacity for deep 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 nourishment 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 wanted to regain that mental elasticity, to halt the brain rot.

Therefore, about a twelve months back, I made a small vow: every time I came across a term I didn’t understand – whether in a book, an piece, or an overheard conversation – I would look it up and write it down. Nothing elaborate, no elegant notebook or fountain pen. Just a ongoing record kept, amusingly, on my smartphone. Each week, I’d spend a few minutes reading the collection back in an effort to lodge the word into my memory.

The record now spans almost 20 pages, and this tiny habit 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 mental calisthenics of the ritual. Each time I look up and record a word, I feel a faint stretch, as though some underused part of my mind is stirring again. Even if I never use “eidolon” in dialogue, the very act of spotting, logging and reviewing it breaks the drift into inactive, semi-skimmed attention.

There is also a journalling element to it – it functions as something of a journal, a log of where I’ve been reading, what I’ve been pondering and who I’ve been hearing.

It's not as if it’s an easy routine to keep up. It is frequently extremely impractical. If I’m reading on the subway, I have to stop in the middle, take out my phone and type “millennialism” into my digital document while trying not to elbow the stranger pressed against me. It can reduce my pace to a maddening speed. (The Kindle, with its integrated dictionary, is much kinder). And then there’s the reviewing (which I often neglect to do), conscientiously scrolling through my growing word-hoard like I’m studying for a vocabulary test.

In practice, I integrate maybe 5% of these terms into my daily speech. “Incorrigible” was adopted. “mournful” as well. But the majority of them remain like museum pieces – appreciated and listed but seldom used.

Still, it’s rendered my thinking much keener. I find myself reaching less frequently for the same overused handful of adjectives, and more frequently for something exact and strong. Few things are more satisfying than discovering the exact term you were seeking – like locating the missing component that snaps the image into place.

At a time when our gadgets siphon off our attention with merciless effectiveness, it feels rebellious to use my own as a tool for slow thinking. And it has given me back something I worried I’d forfeited – the pleasure of exercising a mind that, after a long time of slack scrolling, is at last waking up again.