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When I was a youngster, I consumed novels until my vision grew hazy. Once my GCSEs arrived, I exercised the stamina of a ascetic, revising for lengthy periods without pause. But in recent years, I’ve watched that capacity for intense concentration dissolve into infinite scrolling on my device. My attention span now contracts like a slug at the tap of a finger. Reading for pleasure feels less like nourishment and more like endurance training. And for someone who creates content for a living, this is a occupational risk as well as something that left me disheartened. I aimed to regain that cognitive flexibility, to stop the mental decline.

Therefore, about a twelve months back, I made a modest vow: every time I came across a term I didn’t understand – whether in a novel, an article, or an overheard conversation – I would research it and record it. Not a thing elaborate, no leather-bound journal or stylish pen. Just a running list maintained, amusingly, on my smartphone. Each week, I’d spend a few moments reading the collection back in an attempt to imprint the vocabulary into my memory.

The record now spans almost 20 pages, and this tiny ritual has been quietly transformative. The benefit is less about peacocking with obscure descriptors – which, let’s face it, can make you appear insufferable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the ritual. Each time I look up and record a word, I feel a slight stretch, as though some neglected part of my mind is stirring again. Even if I never deploy “phantom” in conversation, the very act of noticing, logging and reviewing it interrupts the drift into inactive, semi-skimmed attention.

Additionally, there's a diary-keeping aspect to it – it functions as something of a diary, a record of where I’ve been reading, what I’ve been thinking about and who I’ve been hearing.

Not that it’s an easy routine to keep up. It is often extremely inconvenient. If I’m reading on the tube, I have to stop mid-paragraph, take out my phone and enter “millenarianism” into my Google doc while trying not to elbow the stranger squeezed against me. It can reduce my pace to a frustrating speed. (The Kindle, with its integrated dictionary, is much easier). And then there’s the revising (which I often forget to do), conscientiously browsing through my expanding word-hoard like I’m studying for a vocabulary test.

In practice, I incorporate maybe 5% of these terms into my everyday conversation. “Incorrigible” made the cut. “Lugubrious” too. But most of them remain like museum pieces – admired and catalogued but rarely handled.

Still, it’s made my mind much sharper. I notice I'm reaching less frequently for the same overused selection of adjectives, and more frequently for something exact and muscular. Few things are more gratifying than unearthing the perfect term you were seeking – like locating the missing puzzle piece that snaps the image into place.

At a time when our gadgets drain our focus with merciless efficiency, it feels rebellious to use my own as a instrument for slow thinking. And it has given me back something I worried I’d lost – the pleasure of exercising a intellect that, after a long time of lazy browsing, is at last waking up again.