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When I was a youngster, I consumed books until my vision blurred. Once my exams arrived, I demonstrated the stamina of a ascetic, studying for hours without pause. But in lately, I’ve watched that capacity for intense concentration fade into infinite browsing on my device. My focus now shrinks like a snail at the touch of a thumb. Engaging with books for enjoyment seems less like sustenance and more like endurance training. And for someone who creates content for a profession, this is a professional hazard as well as something that left me disheartened. I wanted to regain that cognitive flexibility, to stop the mental decline.

Therefore, about a twelve months back, I made a small promise: every time I encountered a term I didn’t understand – whether in a book, an article, or an overheard discussion – I would research it and write it down. Not a thing elaborate, no leather-bound journal or fountain pen. Just a ongoing record kept, ironically, on my phone. Each week, I’d devote a few minutes reading the collection back in an attempt to imprint the word into my memory.

The record now covers almost twenty sheets, and this tiny habit has been quietly transformative. The benefit is less about showing off with uncommon descriptors – which, let’s face it, can make you appear unbearable – and more about the cognitive exercise of the ritual. Each time I search for and note a term, I feel a faint expansion, as though some neglected part of my brain is stirring again. Even if I never deploy “phantom” in dialogue, the very process of spotting, documenting and reviewing it breaks the slide into passive, semi-skimmed focus.

Additionally, there's a journalling element to it – it acts as something of a journal, a record of where I’ve been engaging, what I’ve been pondering and who I’ve been hearing.

It's not as if it’s an simple habit to maintain. It is often very impractical. If I’m engaged on the subway, I have to pause in the middle, take out my device and type “millennialism” into my digital document while trying not to bump the stranger squeezed against me. It can reduce my pace to a maddening speed. (The Kindle, with its built-in lexicon, is much kinder). And then there’s the reviewing (which I frequently forget to do), conscientiously scrolling through my growing vocabulary collection like I’m preparing for a vocabulary test.

Realistically, 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 exhibits – appreciated and catalogued but seldom handled.

Still, it’s rendered my mind much sharper. I find myself turning less frequently for the same tired handful of adjectives, and more often for something precise and muscular. Rarely are more gratifying than discovering the perfect word you were seeking – like locating the missing component that snaps the picture into place.

In an era when our gadgets siphon off our attention with merciless efficiency, it feels rebellious to use my own as a instrument for slow thought. And it has restored to me something I feared I’d lost – the pleasure of exercising a mind that, after a long time of slack scrolling, is finally waking up again.