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When I was a child, I consumed books until my vision blurred. When my exams came around, I exercised the stamina of a monk, studying for hours without pause. But in recent years, I’ve observed that ability for intense focus fade into infinite browsing on my device. My focus now contracts like a slug at the touch of a finger. Reading for pleasure feels less like sustenance and more like endurance training. And for a person who creates content for a living, this is a professional hazard as well as something that left me disheartened. I aimed to restore that mental elasticity, to halt the brain rot.

Therefore, about a twelve months back, I made a small vow: every time I encountered a word I didn’t understand – whether in a novel, an piece, or an overheard conversation – I would look it up and write it down. Not a thing fancy, no leather-bound journal or stylish pen. Just a running list kept, amusingly, on my smartphone. Each week, I’d spend a few minutes reviewing the collection back in an effort to imprint the word into my recall.

The list now spans almost twenty sheets, and this small habit has been subtly life-changing. The benefit is less about showing off with obscure descriptors – which, to be honest, can make you sound insufferable – and more about the cognitive exercise of the practice. Each time I look up and note a word, I feel a faint stretch, as though some neglected part of my mind is flexing again. Even if I never deploy “eidolon” in dialogue, the very process of noticing, logging and reviewing it interrupts the slide into passive, semi-skimmed focus.

There is also a journalling element to it – it acts as something of a journal, a log of where I’ve been reading, what I’ve been thinking about and who I’ve been listening to.

It's not as if it’s an simple routine to keep up. It is often very inconvenient. If I’m engaged on the subway, I have to pause mid-paragraph, pull out my device and type “millennialism” into my digital document while trying not to bump the stranger pressed against me. It can slow my pace to a maddening speed. (The e-reader, with its built-in dictionary, is much easier). And then there’s the revising (which I frequently forget to do), dutifully scrolling through my growing vocabulary collection like I’m preparing for a word test.

Realistically, I incorporate perhaps 5% of these terms into my everyday speech. “Incorrigible” made the cut. “mournful” too. But most of them stay like museum pieces – appreciated and listed but seldom handled.

Still, it’s made my mind much keener. I find myself turning less frequently for the same overused selection of adjectives, and more often for something exact and strong. Rarely are more gratifying than discovering the perfect term you were searching for – like locating the missing component that locks the picture into place.

At a time when our devices siphon off our focus with merciless efficiency, it feels rebellious to use mine as a instrument for slow thinking. And it has restored to me something I feared I’d forfeited – the joy of engaging a mind that, after years of lazy browsing, is finally waking up again.