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When I was a youngster, I devoured novels until my eyes grew hazy. When my exams arrived, I demonstrated the endurance of a monk, revising for lengthy periods without pause. But in recent years, I’ve watched that ability for intense focus fade into infinite browsing on my device. My attention span now shrinks like a snail at the touch of a finger. Reading for enjoyment feels less like nourishment and more like a marathon. And for a person who creates content for a profession, this is a occupational risk as well as something that left me disheartened. I aimed to restore that mental elasticity, to stop the mental decline.

So, about a year ago, I made a small promise: every time I encountered a term I didn’t know – whether in a book, an article, or an casual discussion – I would look it up and record it. Nothing elaborate, no elegant notebook or fountain pen. Just a ongoing record kept, ironically, on my phone. Each week, I’d spend a few moments reviewing the list back in an effort to imprint the word into my recall.

The record now spans almost 20 pages, and this tiny habit has been quietly transformative. The payoff is less about showing off with obscure adjectives – which, to be honest, can make you sound unbearable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the practice. Each time I look up and record a term, I feel a faint expansion, as though some neglected part of my brain is stirring again. Even if I never use “eidolon” in dialogue, the very process of spotting, documenting and revising it interrupts the slide into inactive, superficial attention.

Additionally, there's a diary-keeping element to it – it functions as something of a journal, 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 easy routine to keep up. It is frequently extremely inconvenient. If I’m reading on the tube, I have to pause in the middle, pull out my device and enter “millennialism” into my digital document while trying not to bump the person squeezed against me. It can slow my pace to a frustrating crawl. (The Kindle, with its built-in dictionary, is much kinder). And then there’s the reviewing (which I often forget to do), dutifully scrolling through my expanding vocabulary collection like I’m preparing for a word test.

In practice, I integrate perhaps five percent of these terms into my daily conversation. “unreformable” was adopted. “mournful” too. But the majority of them remain like exhibits – admired and listed but seldom used.

Still, it’s made my thinking much keener. I find myself turning less frequently for the same tired selection of adjectives, and more frequently for something precise and muscular. Rarely are more satisfying than discovering the exact word you were searching for – like locating the lost puzzle piece that snaps the image into position.

At a time when our gadgets drain our focus with relentless effectiveness, it feels rebellious to use my own as a instrument for slow thought. And it has restored to me something I worried I’d lost – the joy of engaging a mind that, after a long time of slack browsing, is finally stirring again.