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When I was a child, I devoured books until my vision grew hazy. Once my exams came around, I exercised the stamina of a ascetic, revising for lengthy periods without a break. But in lately, I’ve watched that ability for intense concentration fade into endless scrolling on my phone. My focus now shrinks like a snail at the tap of a thumb. Engaging with books for pleasure feels less like nourishment and more like endurance training. And for a person who writes for a profession, this is a professional hazard as well as something that made me sad. I aimed to regain that mental elasticity, to stop the brain rot.

Therefore, about a year ago, I made a modest promise: every time I encountered a word I didn’t understand – whether in a book, an article, or an casual discussion – I would look it up and record it. Nothing fancy, no elegant notebook or stylish pen. Just a ongoing record kept, ironically, on my smartphone. Each week, I’d devote a few moments reviewing the collection back in an effort to lodge the word into my memory.

The record now covers almost twenty sheets, and this small habit has been subtly transformative. The benefit is less about showing off with obscure adjectives – which, let’s face it, can make you appear unbearable – and more about the cognitive exercise of the practice. Each time I look up and record a term, I feel a faint stretch, as though some neglected part of my mind is stirring again. Even if I never use “phantom” in dialogue, the very process of noticing, documenting and reviewing it breaks the drift into inactive, superficial focus.

Additionally, there's a journalling element to it – it acts as something of a diary, 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 keep up. It is frequently 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 person squeezed against me. It can reduce my pace to a maddening speed. (The Kindle, with its integrated dictionary, is much kinder). And then there’s the revising (which I frequently forget to do), conscientiously scrolling through my expanding vocabulary collection like I’m studying for a vocabulary test.

Realistically, I incorporate maybe five percent of these words into my daily conversation. “Incorrigible” made the cut. “Lugubrious” as well. But most of them stay like exhibits – admired and listed but seldom used.

Nevertheless, it’s made my mind much keener. I find myself turning less frequently for the same overused handful of adjectives, and more frequently for something precise and muscular. Rarely are more gratifying than discovering the exact word you were seeking – like locating the missing component that locks the picture into position.

In an era when our gadgets siphon off our attention with relentless efficiency, it feels subversive to use mine as a tool for slow thought. And it has restored to me something I feared I’d lost – the joy of engaging a mind that, after a long time of lazy browsing, is at last waking up again.