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As a child, I devoured books until my eyes blurred. Once my exams came around, I exercised the endurance of a monk, revising for hours without pause. But in lately, I’ve observed that ability for intense focus dissolve into endless scrolling on my phone. My focus now shrinks like a slug at the tap of a finger. Reading for enjoyment feels less like nourishment and more like a marathon. And for someone who writes for a profession, this is a occupational risk as well as something that made me sad. I wanted to regain that cognitive flexibility, to stop the brain rot.

So, about a year ago, I made a small vow: every time I encountered a word I didn’t know – whether in a novel, an piece, or an casual conversation – I would research it and write it down. Nothing elaborate, no leather-bound journal or stylish pen. Just a ongoing record maintained, ironically, on my phone. Each seven days, I’d devote a few moments reviewing the collection back in an attempt to lodge the vocabulary into my recall.

The list now covers almost 20 pages, and this tiny habit has been subtly transformative. The payoff is less about showing off with uncommon descriptors – which, to be honest, can make you appear unbearable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the practice. Each time I look up and note a word, I feel a faint stretch, as though some underused part of my mind is flexing again. Even if I never use “phantom” in dialogue, the very act of noticing, documenting and revising it interrupts the slide into passive, superficial attention.

Additionally, there's a journalling element 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.

It's not as if it’s an simple habit to maintain. It is often extremely impractical. If I’m engaged 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 person pressed against me. It can reduce my reading to a frustrating speed. (The e-reader, with its integrated dictionary, is much kinder). And then there’s the reviewing (which I often forget to do), dutifully scrolling through my expanding vocabulary collection like I’m studying for a word test.

In practice, I integrate maybe five percent of these words into my daily speech. “Incorrigible” made the cut. “Lugubrious” too. But the majority of them stay like museum pieces – admired and catalogued but rarely handled.

Nevertheless, it’s rendered my thinking much keener. I find myself reaching less frequently for the same overused handful of adjectives, and more often for something exact and strong. Rarely are more satisfying than unearthing the exact word you were searching for – like finding the missing puzzle piece that locks the image into position.

At a time when our gadgets siphon off our attention with merciless efficiency, it feels subversive to use mine as a instrument for slow thinking. And it has given me back something I feared I’d lost – the pleasure of engaging a intellect that, after a long time of slack scrolling, is finally stirring again.