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When I was a child, I devoured novels until my eyes blurred. When my GCSEs came around, I exercised the endurance of a ascetic, studying for hours without a break. But in recent years, I’ve observed that capacity for deep concentration dissolve into endless browsing on my phone. My focus now shrinks like a snail at the tap of a finger. Reading for enjoyment seems less like sustenance 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 restore that mental elasticity, to halt the mental decline.

So, about a year ago, I made a modest promise: every time I encountered a term I didn’t understand – whether in a book, an article, or an overheard conversation – I would research it and write it down. Not a thing fancy, no elegant notebook or fountain pen. Just a ongoing record maintained, ironically, on my phone. Each seven days, I’d devote a few minutes reviewing the collection back in an effort to imprint the word into my memory.

The record now spans almost twenty sheets, and this small habit has been subtly life-changing. The payoff is less about showing off with uncommon descriptors – which, let’s face it, can make you appear unbearable – and more about the cognitive exercise of the practice. Each time I look up and note a term, I feel a faint stretch, as though some underused part of my brain is stirring again. Even if I never use “phantom” in dialogue, the very process of noticing, documenting and reviewing it breaks the drift into passive, semi-skimmed focus.

There is also a diary-keeping aspect to it – it acts as something of a journal, a log of where I’ve been reading, what I’ve been pondering and who I’ve been listening to.

Not that it’s an easy routine to keep up. It is frequently extremely impractical. If I’m reading on the tube, I have to pause mid-paragraph, take out my phone and enter “millenarianism” into my digital document while trying not to bump the stranger squeezed against me. It can slow my pace to a maddening speed. (The e-reader, with its built-in dictionary, is much easier). And then there’s the reviewing (which I often neglect to do), conscientiously scrolling through my growing vocabulary collection like I’m preparing for a vocabulary test.

In practice, I incorporate perhaps five percent of these words into my everyday speech. “unreformable” made the cut. “mournful” as well. But the majority of them stay like exhibits – appreciated and listed but seldom handled.

Still, it’s rendered my mind much keener. I notice I'm reaching less often for the same overused selection of adjectives, and more often for something exact and strong. Few things are more satisfying than unearthing the exact term you were seeking – like finding the missing puzzle piece that snaps the image into place.

At a time when our gadgets drain our attention with relentless effectiveness, it feels rebellious to use my own as a tool for slow thinking. And it has restored to me something I worried I’d lost – the pleasure of engaging a intellect that, after years of lazy browsing, is finally waking up again.