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When I was a child, I devoured books until my vision grew hazy. Once my exams arrived, I demonstrated the stamina of a monk, revising for lengthy periods without pause. But in recent years, I’ve observed that capacity for intense focus fade into infinite browsing on my phone. My focus now shrinks like a snail at the tap of a finger. Reading for pleasure feels less like sustenance and more like a marathon. And for a person who writes for a profession, this is a occupational risk as well as something that made me sad. I wanted to restore that cognitive flexibility, to halt the mental decline.

So, about a twelve months back, I made a small promise: every time I encountered a word I didn’t understand – whether in a book, an article, or an casual discussion – I would look it up and write it down. Nothing elaborate, no leather-bound journal or stylish pen. Just a running list maintained, ironically, on my smartphone. Each seven days, I’d spend a few moments reviewing the collection back in an effort to imprint the word into my memory.

The list now covers almost 20 pages, and this small ritual has been subtly transformative. The benefit is less about showing off with obscure adjectives – which, to be honest, can make you appear unbearable – and more about the cognitive exercise of the practice. Each time I look up and note a term, I feel a faint expansion, as though some underused part of my mind is flexing again. Even if I never use “phantom” in conversation, the very process of spotting, logging and revising it interrupts the drift into passive, semi-skimmed focus.

There is also a diary-keeping aspect to it – it acts as something of a journal, a record of where I’ve been engaging, what I’ve been pondering and who I’ve been hearing.

Not that it’s an easy routine to maintain. It is frequently very impractical. If I’m engaged on the subway, I have to pause mid-paragraph, pull out my device and enter “millenarianism” into my Google doc while trying not to bump the person squeezed against me. It can slow my reading to a frustrating crawl. (The e-reader, with its integrated dictionary, is much easier). And then there’s the revising (which I frequently forget to do), conscientiously browsing through my growing word-hoard like I’m studying for a word test.

In practice, I incorporate perhaps 5% of these words into my everyday conversation. “unreformable” made the cut. “Lugubrious” as well. But most of them stay like exhibits – admired and catalogued but seldom used.

Still, it’s made my mind much sharper. I notice I'm turning less often for the same overused selection of descriptors, and more often for something precise and muscular. Few things are more satisfying than unearthing the perfect term you were searching for – like locating the lost component that locks the picture into position.

In an era when our devices siphon off our focus with merciless effectiveness, it feels subversive to use my own as a instrument for slow thinking. And it has given me back something I feared I’d forfeited – the joy of engaging a intellect that, after a long time of slack browsing, is finally waking up again.