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When I was a youngster, I devoured novels until my eyes blurred. When my GCSEs came around, I demonstrated the stamina of a ascetic, revising for hours without a break. But in recent years, I’ve observed that capacity for deep focus fade into endless browsing on my phone. My focus now shrinks like a slug at the tap of a thumb. Reading for pleasure feels less like nourishment and more like endurance training. And for a person who writes for a living, this is a occupational risk as well as something that made me sad. I aimed to regain that cognitive flexibility, to stop the mental decline.

Therefore, about a twelve months back, I made a small vow: every time I came across a word I didn’t know – whether in a novel, an piece, or an overheard discussion – I would research it and record it. Not a thing elaborate, no elegant notebook or fountain pen. Just a running list maintained, amusingly, on my phone. Each seven days, I’d devote a few minutes reviewing the collection back in an effort to lodge the word into my memory.

The list now covers almost twenty sheets, and this tiny habit has been subtly transformative. The payoff is less about peacocking with obscure descriptors – which, let’s face it, can make you appear insufferable – and more about the cognitive exercise of the ritual. Each time I search for and note a word, I feel a faint expansion, as though some underused part of my brain is flexing again. Even if I never deploy “eidolon” in dialogue, the very act of noticing, logging and reviewing it interrupts the slide 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 reading, what I’ve been thinking about and who I’ve been hearing.

It's not as if it’s an easy habit to keep up. It is frequently extremely inconvenient. If I’m reading on the tube, I have to pause in the middle, take out my device and type “millennialism” into my digital document while trying not to bump the person squeezed against me. It can slow my pace to a frustrating speed. (The e-reader, with its integrated lexicon, is much kinder). And then there’s the reviewing (which I often neglect to do), dutifully browsing through my growing word-hoard like I’m preparing for a word test.

Realistically, I integrate maybe 5% of these words into my everyday speech. “Incorrigible” was adopted. “mournful” too. But most of them stay like exhibits – appreciated and listed but rarely handled.

Still, it’s rendered my mind much sharper. I notice I'm reaching less often for the same tired handful of descriptors, and more often for something exact and muscular. Few things are more satisfying than discovering the exact word you were seeking – like locating the lost puzzle piece that snaps the image into position.

In an era when our gadgets siphon off our attention with relentless effectiveness, it feels rebellious to use my own as a tool for slow thought. And it has restored to me something I worried I’d lost – the pleasure of engaging a mind that, after a long time of slack scrolling, is at last waking up again.