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As a youngster, I devoured novels until my vision grew hazy. When my exams arrived, I demonstrated the endurance of a ascetic, studying for hours without pause. But in lately, I’ve observed that capacity for deep focus dissolve into infinite scrolling on my device. My attention span now shrinks like a slug at the tap of a thumb. Engaging with books for pleasure seems less like sustenance and more like endurance training. And for someone who writes for a living, this is a professional hazard as well as something that left me disheartened. I aimed to restore that mental elasticity, to stop the brain rot.

So, about a twelve months back, I made a modest promise: every time I came across a term I didn’t know – whether in a novel, an article, or an casual conversation – I would research it and record it. Nothing fancy, no elegant notebook or fountain pen. Just a ongoing record kept, ironically, on my smartphone. Each seven days, I’d devote a few minutes reading the list back in an attempt to lodge the word into my recall.

The list now spans almost twenty sheets, and this tiny ritual has been subtly transformative. The benefit is less about showing off with obscure adjectives – which, to be honest, can make you sound unbearable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the practice. Each time I look up and note a term, I feel a slight expansion, as though some neglected part of my brain is flexing again. Even if I never deploy “eidolon” in conversation, the very act of spotting, logging and reviewing it interrupts the slide into inactive, semi-skimmed focus.

Additionally, there's a diary-keeping aspect to it – it functions as something of a diary, a record of where I’ve been engaging, what I’ve been pondering and who I’ve been listening to.

Not that it’s an easy habit to maintain. It is frequently extremely inconvenient. If I’m reading on the subway, I have to stop mid-paragraph, pull out my device and enter “millennialism” into my Google doc while trying not to elbow the stranger squeezed against me. It can reduce my reading to a maddening speed. (The Kindle, with its built-in dictionary, is much easier). And then there’s the reviewing (which I often forget to do), conscientiously scrolling through my expanding word-hoard like I’m preparing for a word test.

Realistically, I incorporate maybe five percent of these terms into my daily conversation. “Incorrigible” was adopted. “Lugubrious” as well. But most of them remain like museum pieces – appreciated and catalogued but rarely handled.

Nevertheless, it’s made my thinking much sharper. I notice I'm turning less often for the same overused selection of descriptors, and more frequently for something exact and muscular. Rarely are more gratifying than unearthing the perfect term you were searching for – like finding the missing component that locks the picture into position.

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