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As a child, I consumed books until my vision grew hazy. Once my exams arrived, I exercised the endurance of a monk, revising for lengthy periods without a break. But in recent years, I’ve watched that capacity for intense concentration dissolve into infinite browsing on my phone. My attention span now contracts like a slug at the touch of a finger. Engaging with books for pleasure seems less like nourishment and more like endurance training. And for a person who creates content for a living, this is a occupational risk as well as something that left me disheartened. I wanted to regain that cognitive flexibility, to stop the mental decline.

Therefore, about a year ago, I made a modest vow: every time I came across a word I didn’t know – whether in a book, an piece, or an overheard discussion – I would look it up and record it. Nothing fancy, no leather-bound journal or fountain pen. Just a ongoing record kept, ironically, on my phone. Each seven days, I’d spend a few minutes reading the collection back in an effort to imprint the vocabulary into my memory.

The list now covers almost twenty sheets, and this tiny habit has been quietly transformative. The benefit is less about peacocking with uncommon adjectives – which, to be honest, can make you appear insufferable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the ritual. Each time I search for and record a term, I feel a slight expansion, as though some neglected part of my brain is flexing again. Even if I never use “eidolon” in conversation, the very process of noticing, logging and revising it breaks the drift into inactive, semi-skimmed focus.

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

Not that it’s an simple routine to maintain. It is frequently very impractical. If I’m engaged on the subway, I have to pause in the middle, pull out my phone and enter “millennialism” into my Google doc while trying not to bump the person squeezed against me. It can reduce my reading to a maddening speed. (The e-reader, with its integrated dictionary, is much easier). And then there’s the reviewing (which I often neglect to do), dutifully browsing through my expanding vocabulary collection like I’m studying for a word test.

In practice, I incorporate maybe 5% of these words into my daily speech. “Incorrigible” made the cut. “mournful” too. But the majority of them stay like museum pieces – admired and listed but rarely handled.

Still, it’s rendered my thinking much keener. I notice I'm reaching less often for the same overused handful of descriptors, and more often for something precise and strong. Few things are more gratifying than discovering the perfect word you were seeking – like finding the lost component that locks the image into place.

In an era when our devices drain our focus with relentless efficiency, it feels rebellious to use mine as a instrument for deliberate thinking. And it has restored to me something I feared I’d forfeited – the pleasure of exercising a intellect that, after a long time of lazy browsing, is finally waking up again.