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As a child, I devoured novels until my eyes grew hazy. Once my GCSEs arrived, I exercised the stamina of a ascetic, studying for lengthy periods without pause. But in recent years, I’ve watched that capacity for intense concentration dissolve into endless scrolling on my phone. My attention span now shrinks like a slug at the tap of a finger. Reading for pleasure feels less like nourishment and more like a marathon. And for someone who creates content for a living, this is a occupational risk as well as something that made me sad. 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 word I didn’t understand – whether in a novel, an piece, or an casual conversation – I would look it up and record it. Not a thing elaborate, no elegant notebook or fountain pen. Just a running list maintained, ironically, on my phone. Each week, I’d devote a few minutes reading the list back in an effort to lodge the word into my memory.

The list now spans almost twenty sheets, and this tiny habit has been quietly transformative. The benefit is less about showing off with obscure descriptors – which, let’s face it, can make you appear unbearable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the practice. Each time I look up and record a word, I feel a faint stretch, as though some underused part of my mind is stirring again. Even if I never use “eidolon” in conversation, the very process of spotting, logging and revising it interrupts the slide into inactive, superficial attention.

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

It's not as if it’s an simple routine to maintain. It is frequently very inconvenient. If I’m reading on the tube, I have to pause in the middle, take out my phone and type “millenarianism” into my Google doc while trying not to elbow the person pressed against me. It can slow my pace to a frustrating speed. (The Kindle, with its integrated dictionary, 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 word test.

Realistically, I incorporate maybe 5% of these words into my daily conversation. “unreformable” was adopted. “Lugubrious” too. But most of them stay like exhibits – admired and catalogued but seldom used.

Nevertheless, it’s rendered my mind much keener. I notice I'm reaching less frequently for the same tired handful of descriptors, and more often for something precise and muscular. Rarely are more gratifying than unearthing the exact word you were searching for – like finding the missing puzzle piece that locks the image into position.

In an era when our gadgets siphon off our attention with relentless effectiveness, it feels subversive to use mine as a tool for deliberate thought. And it has given me back something I worried I’d lost – the joy of exercising a intellect that, after a long time of slack browsing, is finally waking up again.