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When I was a child, I devoured books until my eyes blurred. Once my GCSEs arrived, I demonstrated the stamina of a monk, studying for lengthy periods without a break. But in lately, I’ve watched that ability for intense concentration fade into infinite scrolling on my phone. My attention span now contracts like a snail at the tap 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 left me disheartened. I aimed to restore that cognitive flexibility, to halt the mental decline.

So, about a year ago, I made a modest promise: every time I came across a word I didn’t know – whether in a book, an piece, or an overheard discussion – I would look it up and write it down. Nothing fancy, no elegant notebook or stylish pen. Just a running list kept, amusingly, on my smartphone. Each seven days, I’d spend a few moments reading the collection back in an effort to lodge the word into my memory.

The list now spans almost twenty sheets, and this tiny ritual has been quietly transformative. The benefit is less about showing off with uncommon descriptors – which, to be honest, can make you appear unbearable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the ritual. Each time I look up and record a term, I feel a slight stretch, as though some neglected part of my brain is stirring again. Even if I never use “phantom” in conversation, the very act of noticing, documenting and revising it interrupts the drift 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 pondering and who I’ve been hearing.

Not that it’s an easy routine to maintain. It is often very inconvenient. If I’m reading on the tube, I have to stop in the middle, take out my device and type “millenarianism” into my digital document while trying not to elbow the person squeezed against me. It can slow my reading to a frustrating speed. (The Kindle, with its built-in lexicon, is much easier). And then there’s the revising (which I frequently forget to do), dutifully browsing through my growing word-hoard like I’m studying for a word test.

In practice, I incorporate perhaps 5% of these terms into my daily speech. “Incorrigible” made the cut. “mournful” too. But most of them stay like museum pieces – appreciated and catalogued but rarely handled.

Nevertheless, it’s rendered my mind much sharper. I notice I'm reaching less often for the same overused selection of adjectives, and more often for something precise and muscular. Few things are more satisfying than discovering the perfect word you were searching for – like finding the missing puzzle piece that snaps the picture into position.

At a time when our devices drain our focus with merciless effectiveness, it feels rebellious to use my own as a instrument for deliberate thought. And it has given me back something I worried I’d forfeited – the joy of exercising a mind that, after years of slack browsing, is at last waking up again.