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When I was a child, I consumed novels until my vision grew hazy. Once my exams came around, I exercised the endurance of a ascetic, studying for hours without a break. But in lately, I’ve observed that ability for deep focus fade into endless browsing on my phone. My attention span now contracts like a snail at the touch of a finger. Engaging with books for enjoyment feels less like nourishment and more like endurance training. And for a person who writes for a living, this is a professional hazard as well as something that left me disheartened. I aimed to restore that cognitive flexibility, to halt the mental decline.

Therefore, about a year ago, I made a modest vow: every time I encountered a term I didn’t know – whether in a book, an article, or an overheard discussion – I would look it up and write it down. Not a thing elaborate, no leather-bound journal or fountain pen. Just a running list maintained, ironically, on my smartphone. Each week, I’d spend a few minutes reading the list back in an attempt to imprint the word into my recall.

The list now covers almost twenty sheets, and this small habit has been subtly life-changing. The payoff is less about peacocking with obscure 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 note a word, I feel a faint stretch, as though some underused part of my brain is stirring again. Even if I never deploy “eidolon” in dialogue, the very process of noticing, logging and revising it interrupts the slide into passive, superficial attention.

Additionally, there's a journalling element to it – it functions as something of a journal, a record of where I’ve been reading, what I’ve been pondering and who I’ve been listening to.

It's not as if it’s an easy habit to keep up. It is frequently very impractical. If I’m engaged on the subway, I have to stop in the middle, take out my phone and type “millennialism” into my Google doc while trying not to elbow the stranger pressed against me. It can reduce my reading to a maddening crawl. (The e-reader, with its integrated lexicon, is much kinder). And then there’s the revising (which I often forget to do), dutifully browsing through my growing word-hoard like I’m studying for a vocabulary test.

Realistically, I incorporate perhaps 5% of these words into my everyday conversation. “Incorrigible” made the cut. “Lugubrious” too. But the majority of them stay like exhibits – appreciated and catalogued but rarely handled.

Nevertheless, it’s made my thinking much keener. I find myself reaching less frequently for the same overused handful of descriptors, and more often for something precise and strong. Rarely are more gratifying than discovering the perfect term you were searching for – like locating the lost puzzle piece that snaps the image into position.

At a time when our gadgets siphon off our focus with relentless effectiveness, it feels rebellious to use mine as a instrument for slow thought. And it has restored to me something I feared I’d lost – the pleasure of exercising a mind that, after a long time of lazy scrolling, is finally stirring again.