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As a youngster, I devoured novels until my eyes grew hazy. When my exams arrived, I demonstrated the stamina of a monk, studying for hours without a break. But in recent years, I’ve observed that capacity for deep focus dissolve into infinite browsing on my device. My attention span now shrinks like a snail at the touch of a finger. Reading for pleasure seems less like sustenance and more like a marathon. And for a person who creates content for a living, this is a occupational risk as well as something that left me disheartened. I aimed to regain that cognitive flexibility, to stop the mental decline.

So, 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 casual conversation – I would research it and record it. Not a thing elaborate, no elegant notebook or fountain pen. Just a ongoing record kept, ironically, on my smartphone. Each week, I’d devote a few moments reviewing the collection back in an attempt to imprint the vocabulary into my recall.

The record now covers almost 20 pages, and this small ritual has been subtly transformative. The payoff is less about peacocking with uncommon adjectives – which, to be honest, can make you appear unbearable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the practice. 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 “phantom” in conversation, the very act of noticing, documenting and revising it interrupts the drift into passive, superficial focus.

Additionally, there's a diary-keeping aspect to it – it functions as something of a diary, a log of where I’ve been reading, what I’ve been thinking about and who I’ve been hearing.

It's not as if it’s an simple routine to maintain. It is frequently very inconvenient. If I’m engaged on the subway, I have to stop mid-paragraph, pull out my phone and enter “millennialism” into my digital document while trying not to bump the person squeezed against me. It can slow my reading to a frustrating crawl. (The e-reader, with its built-in dictionary, is much easier). And then there’s the revising (which I often neglect to do), dutifully scrolling through my expanding vocabulary collection like I’m preparing for a vocabulary test.

Realistically, I incorporate perhaps 5% of these words into my daily conversation. “unreformable” made the cut. “Lugubrious” too. But the majority of them remain like exhibits – admired and listed but rarely used.

Still, it’s made my mind much keener. I find myself turning less frequently for the same overused handful of adjectives, and more frequently for something exact and strong. Rarely are more satisfying than discovering the perfect term you were seeking – like finding the missing puzzle piece that locks the picture into place.

In an era when our gadgets siphon off our focus with merciless effectiveness, it feels rebellious to use my own as a instrument for deliberate thinking. And it has given me back something I feared I’d lost – the joy of exercising a intellect that, after a long time of lazy scrolling, is at last stirring again.