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When I was a youngster, I devoured novels until my vision blurred. When my GCSEs came around, I demonstrated the endurance of a ascetic, studying for hours without pause. But in lately, I’ve observed that capacity for deep focus fade into endless browsing on my phone. My attention span now shrinks like a slug at the tap of a thumb. Engaging with books for enjoyment seems less like nourishment and more like a marathon. And for a person who writes for a living, this is a occupational risk as well as something that made me sad. I wanted to restore that mental elasticity, to halt the mental decline.

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

The record now spans almost 20 pages, and this small ritual has been subtly life-changing. The payoff is less about showing off with obscure adjectives – which, let’s face it, can make you appear unbearable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the practice. Each time I search for and note a word, I feel a slight expansion, as though some neglected part of my mind is stirring again. Even if I never deploy “phantom” in dialogue, the very act of noticing, documenting and reviewing it interrupts the drift into passive, semi-skimmed attention.

Additionally, there's a journalling element to it – it functions as something of a diary, a record 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 habit to maintain. It is often very inconvenient. If I’m engaged on the tube, I have to stop mid-paragraph, take out my phone and type “millennialism” into my digital document while trying not to bump the person pressed against me. It can slow my reading to a maddening speed. (The e-reader, with its integrated lexicon, is much easier). And then there’s the revising (which I often neglect to do), conscientiously scrolling through my expanding vocabulary collection like I’m preparing for a word test.

In practice, I integrate perhaps 5% of these words into my daily conversation. “unreformable” was adopted. “Lugubrious” too. But the majority of them remain like museum pieces – admired and catalogued but seldom used.

Still, it’s made my mind much keener. I notice I'm reaching less often for the same overused handful of adjectives, and more frequently for something exact and strong. Rarely are more gratifying than unearthing the exact word you were seeking – like locating the lost puzzle piece that locks the image into place.

At a time when our gadgets drain our focus with relentless effectiveness, it feels subversive to use my own as a tool for slow thinking. And it has restored to me something I feared I’d forfeited – the pleasure of exercising a mind that, after years of slack scrolling, is at last waking up again.