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When I was a youngster, I devoured novels until my vision grew hazy. Once my exams arrived, I exercised the endurance of a monk, studying for hours without a break. But in lately, I’ve watched that ability for deep focus fade into infinite browsing on my phone. My attention span now contracts like a slug at the touch of a finger. Engaging with books for pleasure seems less like nourishment and more like endurance training. And for someone who creates content for a living, this is a professional hazard as well as something that made me sad. I wanted to regain that cognitive flexibility, to stop the brain rot.

Therefore, about a twelve months back, I made a modest promise: every time I came across a term I didn’t know – whether in a book, an article, or an casual discussion – I would research it and record it. Nothing fancy, no elegant notebook or fountain pen. Just a running list kept, ironically, on my smartphone. Each week, I’d devote a few minutes reviewing the collection back in an effort to lodge the word into my recall.

The record now covers almost twenty sheets, and this small habit has been subtly transformative. The payoff is less about peacocking with uncommon descriptors – which, to be honest, can make you sound unbearable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the practice. Each time I look up and record a term, I feel a faint stretch, as though some neglected part of my brain is flexing again. Even if I never deploy “eidolon” in conversation, the very process of spotting, logging and revising it interrupts the drift into inactive, superficial focus.

Additionally, there's 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 hearing.

Not that it’s an simple routine to keep up. It is often very impractical. If I’m reading on the subway, I have to pause mid-paragraph, pull out my phone and enter “millennialism” into my Google doc while trying not to bump the stranger pressed against me. It can slow my reading to a maddening crawl. (The e-reader, with its built-in dictionary, is much kinder). And then there’s the revising (which I often neglect to do), conscientiously browsing through my expanding word-hoard like I’m studying for a vocabulary test.

In practice, I integrate maybe 5% of these terms into my everyday speech. “Incorrigible” made the cut. “Lugubrious” as well. But the majority of them stay like museum pieces – appreciated and catalogued but seldom used.

Still, it’s made my mind much sharper. I notice I'm turning less often for the same tired selection of adjectives, and more frequently for something exact and strong. Rarely are more gratifying than discovering the exact word you were searching for – like locating the lost puzzle piece that snaps the image into place.

At a time when our gadgets drain our focus with relentless effectiveness, it feels rebellious to use mine as a tool for deliberate thought. And it has given me back something I feared I’d forfeited – the pleasure of exercising a intellect that, after years of lazy scrolling, is finally waking up again.