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As a child, I consumed books until my eyes grew hazy. Once my GCSEs arrived, I exercised the stamina of a ascetic, studying for lengthy periods without a break. But in recent years, I’ve watched that ability for intense focus fade into endless scrolling on my device. My focus now shrinks like a snail at the tap of a thumb. Reading for pleasure seems less like sustenance and more like endurance training. And for someone who writes for a profession, 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.

Therefore, about a year ago, I made a small promise: every time I came across a word I didn’t understand – whether in a novel, an piece, or an overheard discussion – I would research it and write it down. Not a thing fancy, no leather-bound journal or fountain pen. Just a ongoing record kept, ironically, on my smartphone. Each week, I’d devote a few minutes reviewing the list back in an effort to lodge the vocabulary into my recall.

The list now spans almost 20 pages, and this tiny habit has been subtly life-changing. The payoff is less about showing off with uncommon adjectives – which, to be honest, can make you sound unbearable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the ritual. Each time I search for 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 spotting, documenting and reviewing it interrupts the drift into inactive, semi-skimmed attention.

There is also a journalling element to it – it functions as something of a diary, a record of where I’ve been engaging, what I’ve been thinking about and who I’ve been listening to.

Not that it’s an easy routine to maintain. It is often very impractical. If I’m reading on the tube, I have to stop mid-paragraph, take out my phone and enter “millennialism” into my digital document while trying not to elbow the person pressed against me. It can reduce my reading to a maddening crawl. (The Kindle, with its integrated lexicon, is much kinder). And then there’s the reviewing (which I often forget to do), conscientiously browsing through my expanding word-hoard like I’m preparing for a word test.

Realistically, I integrate perhaps five percent of these terms into my everyday speech. “Incorrigible” made the cut. “mournful” too. But the majority of them stay like museum pieces – appreciated and listed but rarely used.

Nevertheless, it’s rendered my mind much keener. I find myself turning less frequently for the same tired handful of adjectives, and more often for something exact and muscular. Few things are more gratifying than unearthing the exact word you were searching for – like locating the lost component that locks the image into position.

At a time when our devices drain our attention with merciless effectiveness, it feels subversive to use mine as a tool for slow thought. And it has given me back something I worried I’d forfeited – the joy of engaging a intellect that, after a long time of slack browsing, is at last waking up again.