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As a youngster, I consumed novels until my vision blurred. When my exams arrived, I exercised the endurance of a monk, revising for lengthy periods without a break. But in lately, I’ve watched that ability for deep concentration dissolve into infinite scrolling on my device. My focus now contracts like a slug at the tap of a finger. Reading for enjoyment seems less like sustenance and more like endurance training. And for someone who creates content for a living, this is a occupational risk as well as something that made me sad. I wanted to regain that cognitive flexibility, to stop the brain rot.

So, about a twelve months back, I made a small promise: every time I encountered a word I didn’t know – whether in a novel, an piece, or an overheard discussion – I would look it up and record it. Nothing elaborate, no leather-bound journal or fountain pen. Just a ongoing record kept, ironically, on my smartphone. Each seven days, I’d spend a few minutes reviewing the collection back in an attempt to lodge the vocabulary into my memory.

The list now covers almost 20 pages, and this small habit has been subtly life-changing. The payoff is less about peacocking with obscure adjectives – which, let’s face it, can make you sound unbearable – and more about the cognitive exercise of the ritual. Each time I look up and note a word, I feel a slight stretch, as though some underused part of my brain is flexing again. Even if I never use “phantom” in conversation, the very process of noticing, logging and reviewing it interrupts the slide into inactive, semi-skimmed attention.

There is also a journalling element to it – it acts 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 easy routine to maintain. It is often extremely inconvenient. If I’m engaged on the subway, I have to stop mid-paragraph, pull out my phone and type “millennialism” into my Google doc while trying not to elbow the person pressed against me. It can reduce my reading to a frustrating speed. (The Kindle, with its integrated dictionary, is much kinder). And then there’s the revising (which I frequently neglect to do), conscientiously browsing through my growing word-hoard like I’m studying for a word test.

Realistically, I integrate perhaps 5% of these words into my everyday speech. “unreformable” made the cut. “Lugubrious” too. But most of them stay like exhibits – appreciated and listed but rarely used.

Still, it’s rendered my mind much sharper. I notice I'm reaching less often for the same overused handful of adjectives, and more often for something precise and muscular. Rarely are more gratifying than unearthing the exact term you were searching for – like locating the lost component that snaps the picture into place.

At a time when our devices siphon off our focus with relentless 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 pleasure of exercising a mind that, after years of lazy scrolling, is finally waking up again.