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As a youngster, I devoured books until my vision blurred. When my exams came around, I demonstrated the stamina of a ascetic, studying for lengthy periods without pause. But in recent years, I’ve observed that ability for deep focus dissolve into infinite scrolling on my phone. My attention span now shrinks like a snail at the touch of a thumb. Reading for pleasure feels less like sustenance and more like a marathon. And for someone who creates content for a living, this is a professional hazard as well as something that left me disheartened. I wanted to regain that mental elasticity, to halt the mental decline.

Therefore, about a year ago, I made a small vow: every time I came across a term I didn’t know – whether in a book, an article, or an casual discussion – I would look it up and write it down. Not a thing elaborate, no elegant notebook or stylish pen. Just a running list maintained, ironically, on my phone. Each week, I’d spend a few moments reading the collection back in an attempt to imprint the word into my memory.

The record now spans almost 20 pages, and this tiny habit has been subtly life-changing. The benefit is less about showing off with obscure adjectives – which, let’s face it, can make you sound unbearable – and more about the cognitive exercise of the practice. Each time I search for and record a word, I feel a faint expansion, as though some neglected part of my brain is stirring again. Even if I never deploy “phantom” in dialogue, the very process of spotting, logging and revising it interrupts the slide into inactive, superficial focus.

There is also a diary-keeping element to it – it functions as something of a diary, a log of where I’ve been engaging, what I’ve been pondering and who I’ve been hearing.

It's not as if it’s an simple habit to keep up. It is often very inconvenient. If I’m reading on the subway, I have to pause in the middle, pull out my phone and type “millenarianism” into my Google doc while trying not to bump the person squeezed against me. It can reduce my reading to a maddening crawl. (The Kindle, 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 preparing for a word test.

In practice, I integrate perhaps five percent of these words into my everyday conversation. “Incorrigible” made the cut. “mournful” as well. But the majority of them remain like museum pieces – admired and catalogued but seldom used.

Still, it’s made my mind much sharper. I notice I'm turning less frequently for the same overused selection of descriptors, and more frequently for something precise and muscular. Few things are more gratifying than discovering the perfect word you were seeking – like finding the lost component that locks the picture into place.

In an era when our gadgets siphon off our attention with merciless effectiveness, it feels subversive to use mine as a tool for deliberate 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 browsing, is at last stirring again.