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When I was a youngster, I devoured books until my vision grew hazy. When my exams arrived, I demonstrated the endurance of a monk, studying for lengthy periods without a break. But in lately, I’ve observed that capacity for deep concentration dissolve into endless browsing on my phone. My attention span now shrinks like a snail at the touch of a thumb. Reading for pleasure feels less like sustenance and more like endurance training. And for someone who creates content for a profession, this is a occupational risk as well as something that left me disheartened. I aimed to regain that cognitive flexibility, to halt the brain rot.

Therefore, about a year ago, I made a small vow: every time I encountered a term I didn’t know – whether in a novel, an piece, or an overheard discussion – I would look it up and record it. Not a thing fancy, no elegant notebook or fountain pen. Just a running list maintained, ironically, on my smartphone. Each week, I’d devote a few minutes reviewing the list back in an attempt to imprint the vocabulary into my memory.

The record now spans almost twenty sheets, and this tiny ritual has been quietly transformative. The payoff is less about showing off with obscure descriptors – which, to be honest, can make you sound insufferable – and more about the cognitive exercise of the practice. Each time I search for and record a term, I feel a faint stretch, as though some neglected part of my mind is stirring again. Even if I never deploy “eidolon” in conversation, the very process of spotting, logging and reviewing it interrupts the drift into inactive, superficial focus.

Additionally, there's a journalling element to it – it acts as something of a journal, a log 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 frequently very inconvenient. If I’m engaged on the subway, I have to stop mid-paragraph, pull out my phone and enter “millennialism” into my Google doc while trying not to elbow the person pressed against me. It can slow my reading to a maddening crawl. (The Kindle, with its built-in lexicon, is much easier). And then there’s the revising (which I often forget to do), dutifully 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 daily conversation. “Incorrigible” was adopted. “mournful” too. But most of them stay like museum pieces – appreciated and listed but seldom used.

Nevertheless, it’s rendered my thinking much keener. I find myself turning less frequently for the same overused handful of adjectives, and more frequently for something exact and muscular. Few things are more satisfying than discovering the exact term you were searching for – like locating the missing component that locks the picture into position.

At a time when our gadgets drain our attention with relentless efficiency, it feels rebellious to use my own as a tool for slow thought. And it has restored to me something I worried I’d lost – the joy of exercising a mind that, after years of lazy browsing, is finally waking up again.