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When I was a child, I consumed novels until my eyes grew hazy. Once my exams came around, I exercised the stamina of a monk, revising for lengthy periods without a break. But in recent years, I’ve watched that ability for intense concentration fade into infinite browsing on my device. My attention span now shrinks like a slug at the tap of a thumb. Reading for enjoyment seems less like nourishment and more like a marathon. And for a person who writes for a profession, this is a professional hazard as well as something that made me sad. I wanted to regain that mental elasticity, to halt the brain rot.

So, about a year ago, I made a modest promise: every time I encountered a term I didn’t understand – whether in a book, an article, or an overheard discussion – I would look it up and write it down. Not a thing fancy, no elegant notebook or stylish pen. Just a running list kept, amusingly, on my phone. Each seven days, I’d spend a few minutes reviewing the collection back in an attempt to imprint the word into my memory.

The record now covers almost twenty sheets, and this small habit has been subtly life-changing. The benefit is less about showing off with uncommon descriptors – which, to be honest, can make you appear insufferable – and more about the cognitive exercise of the ritual. Each time I look up and note a word, I feel a faint stretch, as though some underused part of my brain is flexing again. Even if I never deploy “eidolon” in conversation, the very process of spotting, documenting and reviewing it breaks the drift into passive, superficial attention.

Additionally, there's a journalling aspect to it – it functions as something of a diary, 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 easy habit to maintain. It is often very inconvenient. If I’m reading on the subway, I have to stop mid-paragraph, pull out my device and type “millenarianism” into my Google doc while trying not to elbow the person pressed against me. It can reduce my pace to a maddening crawl. (The e-reader, with its built-in dictionary, 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 vocabulary test.

In practice, I incorporate maybe five percent of these words into my daily conversation. “Incorrigible” made the cut. “Lugubrious” too. But most of them stay like exhibits – admired and listed but rarely used.

Nevertheless, it’s made my thinking much keener. I notice I'm turning less often for the same tired selection of descriptors, and more frequently for something exact and muscular. Rarely are more gratifying than unearthing the perfect term you were seeking – like finding the lost component that locks the picture into place.

At a time when our gadgets siphon off our focus with merciless efficiency, it feels subversive to use my own as a instrument for deliberate thinking. And it has given me back something I worried I’d lost – the pleasure of exercising a intellect that, after a long time of lazy browsing, is at last stirring again.