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When I was a child, I devoured novels until my eyes grew hazy. When my GCSEs came around, I exercised the stamina of a monk, studying for lengthy periods without a break. But in recent years, I’ve watched that capacity for intense focus fade into infinite browsing on my device. My attention span now contracts like a slug at the tap of a thumb. Reading for enjoyment seems less like sustenance and more like a marathon. And for a person who writes for a living, this is a professional hazard as well as something that left me disheartened. I aimed to regain that mental elasticity, to stop the mental decline.

Therefore, about a year ago, I made a small vow: every time I came across a term I didn’t know – whether in a book, an article, or an overheard discussion – I would research it and record it. 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 minutes reading the collection back in an attempt to lodge the word into my memory.

The record now covers almost 20 pages, and this tiny ritual has been subtly life-changing. The payoff is less about showing off with obscure descriptors – which, to be honest, can make you appear insufferable – and more about the cognitive exercise of the ritual. Each time I search for and record a word, I feel a slight expansion, as though some underused part of my brain is flexing again. Even if I never use “phantom” in dialogue, the very act of spotting, documenting and revising it interrupts the slide into inactive, superficial focus.

There is also a diary-keeping element to it – it acts as something of a diary, a record of where I’ve been reading, what I’ve been pondering and who I’ve been hearing.

It's not as if it’s an easy habit to maintain. It is often very inconvenient. If I’m engaged on the tube, I have to stop in the middle, pull out my phone and type “millenarianism” into my digital document while trying not to bump the stranger squeezed against me. It can reduce my reading to a maddening crawl. (The Kindle, with its integrated dictionary, is much kinder). And then there’s the revising (which I frequently neglect to do), dutifully browsing through my growing vocabulary collection like I’m preparing for a word test.

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

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

At a time when our devices drain our attention with merciless effectiveness, it feels rebellious to use mine as a tool for deliberate thinking. And it has restored to me something I worried I’d lost – the joy of exercising a intellect that, after a long time of slack browsing, is at last stirring again.