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As a youngster, I devoured books until my vision blurred. When my exams arrived, I demonstrated the endurance of a ascetic, revising for hours without a break. But in lately, I’ve observed that capacity for intense concentration dissolve into endless scrolling on my device. My focus now contracts like a snail at the touch of a finger. Engaging with books for enjoyment feels less like sustenance and more like endurance training. And for someone who writes for a profession, this is a occupational risk as well as something that made me sad. I aimed to regain that mental elasticity, to halt the mental decline.

So, about a year ago, I made a modest vow: every time I came across a term I didn’t understand – whether in a book, an piece, or an casual discussion – I would look it up and write it down. Nothing fancy, no leather-bound journal or stylish pen. Just a running list kept, ironically, on my smartphone. Each week, I’d spend a few moments reviewing the collection back in an attempt to imprint the vocabulary into my recall.

The record now spans almost 20 pages, and this small habit has been subtly transformative. The benefit is less about peacocking with uncommon descriptors – which, to be honest, can make you sound unbearable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the ritual. Each time I search for and record a word, I feel a slight expansion, as though some underused part of my mind is flexing again. Even if I never deploy “eidolon” in dialogue, the very act of noticing, documenting and reviewing it breaks the drift into passive, semi-skimmed attention.

There is also a diary-keeping aspect to it – it functions as something of a diary, a record 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 routine to keep up. It is often extremely impractical. If I’m engaged on the subway, I have to pause mid-paragraph, take out my device and type “millenarianism” into my Google doc while trying not to elbow the stranger squeezed against me. It can reduce my pace to a frustrating crawl. (The Kindle, with its built-in lexicon, is much kinder). And then there’s the reviewing (which I frequently neglect to do), dutifully browsing through my expanding word-hoard like I’m studying for a vocabulary test.

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

Still, it’s rendered my thinking much keener. I find myself reaching less frequently for the same overused selection of descriptors, and more often for something exact and strong. Few things are more gratifying than discovering the exact term you were seeking – like finding the missing component that locks the picture into place.

At a time when our devices drain our attention with merciless efficiency, it feels subversive to use my own as a tool for slow thought. And it has given me back something I feared I’d lost – the joy of engaging a mind that, after a long time of lazy browsing, is finally stirring again.