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When I was a youngster, I devoured novels until my eyes blurred. When my GCSEs arrived, I demonstrated the stamina of a ascetic, revising for hours without a break. But in lately, I’ve watched that ability for deep focus fade into endless scrolling on my device. My focus now shrinks like a slug at the tap of a thumb. Engaging with books for enjoyment seems 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 left me disheartened. I wanted to restore that mental elasticity, to stop the mental decline.

Therefore, about a year ago, I made a small vow: every time I encountered a word I didn’t understand – whether in a book, an piece, or an overheard conversation – I would look it up and write it down. Nothing elaborate, no leather-bound journal or stylish pen. Just a ongoing record kept, amusingly, on my smartphone. Each week, I’d devote a few minutes reading the collection back in an effort to imprint the word into my memory.

The record now covers almost 20 pages, and this small habit has been subtly transformative. The payoff is less about peacocking with uncommon adjectives – which, let’s face it, can make you appear unbearable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the practice. Each time I look up and record a word, I feel a slight stretch, as though some underused part of my brain is stirring again. Even if I never deploy “phantom” in conversation, the very act of spotting, logging and reviewing it breaks the slide into inactive, superficial attention.

There is also a diary-keeping aspect 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 listening to.

It's not as if it’s an simple habit to maintain. It is often extremely inconvenient. If I’m reading on the subway, I have to stop mid-paragraph, take out my device and enter “millenarianism” into my Google doc while trying not to elbow the person squeezed against me. It can reduce my pace to a maddening crawl. (The Kindle, with its integrated lexicon, is much easier). And then there’s the reviewing (which I frequently forget to do), dutifully browsing through my growing vocabulary collection like I’m preparing for a vocabulary test.

Realistically, I incorporate perhaps five percent of these terms into my everyday speech. “Incorrigible” made the cut. “Lugubrious” as well. But most of them stay like museum pieces – appreciated and listed but rarely used.

Nevertheless, it’s made my thinking much keener. I notice I'm reaching less often for the same overused selection of descriptors, and more often for something exact and muscular. Few things are more satisfying than discovering the perfect term you were seeking – like locating the missing component that locks the picture into place.

In an era when our gadgets siphon off our attention with merciless effectiveness, it feels subversive to use my own as a tool for deliberate thought. And it has given me back something I worried I’d forfeited – the pleasure of engaging a intellect that, after a long time of slack browsing, is finally stirring again.