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As a youngster, I devoured novels until my vision grew hazy. When my exams came around, I demonstrated the endurance of a ascetic, studying for lengthy periods without pause. But in recent years, I’ve observed that ability for intense focus fade into endless scrolling on my device. My focus now contracts like a slug at the touch of a finger. Engaging with books for pleasure seems less like nourishment and more like a marathon. And for someone who writes for a profession, this is a professional hazard as well as something that made me sad. I aimed to regain that mental elasticity, to stop the mental decline.

Therefore, about a year ago, I made a modest vow: every time I encountered a word I didn’t understand – whether in a book, an article, or an overheard conversation – I would research it and write it down. Not a thing elaborate, no elegant notebook or fountain pen. Just a running list maintained, ironically, on my smartphone. Each seven days, I’d devote a few minutes reading the collection back in an effort to imprint the word into my recall.

The record now covers almost twenty sheets, and this small habit has been subtly life-changing. The payoff is less about showing off with uncommon adjectives – which, to be honest, can make you appear insufferable – and more about the cognitive exercise of the practice. Each time I search for and note a word, I feel a faint stretch, as though some underused part of my mind is stirring again. Even if I never deploy “phantom” in conversation, the very process of noticing, logging and reviewing it breaks the drift into passive, superficial attention.

There is also a journalling element to it – it functions as something of a journal, a log of where I’ve been engaging, what I’ve been thinking about and who I’ve been hearing.

It's not as if it’s an simple habit to keep up. It is often extremely impractical. If I’m engaged on the subway, I have to pause in the middle, take out my phone and enter “millennialism” into my digital document while trying not to elbow the stranger pressed against me. It can reduce my pace to a maddening crawl. (The e-reader, with its integrated lexicon, is much easier). And then there’s the reviewing (which I frequently forget to do), dutifully scrolling through my growing word-hoard like I’m studying for a word test.

Realistically, I integrate maybe 5% of these words into my everyday conversation. “Incorrigible” was adopted. “Lugubrious” as well. But most of them stay like exhibits – admired and listed but seldom handled.

Still, it’s rendered my thinking much sharper. I notice I'm reaching less often for the same tired handful of adjectives, and more frequently for something exact and strong. Few things are more gratifying than unearthing the exact word you were searching for – like locating the lost puzzle piece that locks the picture into place.

In an era when our devices drain our attention with merciless efficiency, it feels rebellious to use mine 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 years of slack scrolling, is at last stirring again.