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As a youngster, I devoured novels until my vision blurred. Once my exams arrived, I demonstrated the stamina of a monk, studying for lengthy periods without a break. But in lately, I’ve observed that capacity for deep focus dissolve into endless scrolling on my device. My attention span now shrinks like a snail at the touch of a thumb. Engaging with books for pleasure feels less like nourishment and more like endurance training. And for someone who creates content for a profession, this is a occupational risk as well as something that left me disheartened. I aimed to restore that cognitive flexibility, to halt the mental decline.

Therefore, about a year ago, I made a modest promise: every time I encountered a term I didn’t know – whether in a novel, an article, or an casual discussion – I would look it up and record it. Nothing elaborate, no leather-bound journal or stylish pen. Just a ongoing record kept, ironically, on my smartphone. Each seven days, I’d devote a few moments reading the collection back in an attempt to imprint the vocabulary into my recall.

The record now covers almost twenty sheets, and this small ritual has been quietly life-changing. The payoff is less about showing off with uncommon adjectives – which, to be honest, can make you sound insufferable – and more about the cognitive exercise of the practice. Each time I look up and record a term, I feel a slight stretch, as though some neglected part of my mind is flexing again. Even if I never deploy “phantom” in dialogue, the very process of spotting, documenting and revising it interrupts the slide into inactive, superficial focus.

There is also a diary-keeping aspect to it – it functions as something of a diary, a log of where I’ve been reading, what I’ve been thinking about and who I’ve been hearing.

Not that it’s an simple habit to keep up. It is often extremely inconvenient. If I’m reading on the subway, I have to pause mid-paragraph, pull out my phone and type “millennialism” into my Google doc while trying not to bump the person squeezed against me. It can reduce my pace to a maddening crawl. (The Kindle, with its built-in lexicon, is much kinder). And then there’s the reviewing (which I frequently neglect to do), conscientiously browsing through my growing vocabulary collection like I’m studying for a vocabulary test.

In practice, I incorporate maybe 5% of these words into my everyday conversation. “unreformable” made the cut. “mournful” too. But most of them stay like museum pieces – appreciated and listed but rarely handled.

Still, it’s rendered my thinking much sharper. I find myself reaching less frequently for the same overused handful of descriptors, and more often for something exact and strong. Rarely are more satisfying than unearthing the perfect term you were seeking – like finding the lost puzzle piece that locks the image into place.

In an era when our devices siphon off our attention with merciless effectiveness, it feels rebellious to use my own as a instrument for slow thinking. And it has given me back something I feared I’d forfeited – the pleasure of engaging a mind that, after a long time of slack browsing, is at last waking up again.