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As a child, I consumed books until my eyes grew hazy. When my exams arrived, I demonstrated the stamina of a ascetic, revising for hours without pause. But in lately, I’ve observed that capacity for intense focus fade into infinite scrolling on my phone. My focus now shrinks like a snail at the tap of a finger. Reading for enjoyment feels less like sustenance and more like endurance training. And for a person who creates content for a living, this is a professional hazard as well as something that left me disheartened. I aimed to regain that mental elasticity, to stop the brain rot.

So, about a year ago, I made a modest promise: every time I came across a term I didn’t understand – whether in a book, an article, or an overheard conversation – I would look it up and record it. Not a thing elaborate, no leather-bound journal or stylish pen. Just a running list kept, ironically, on my phone. Each week, I’d devote a few minutes reading the list back in an effort to lodge the word into my memory.

The list now spans almost 20 pages, and this tiny habit has been subtly life-changing. The payoff is less about peacocking 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 record a word, I feel a faint stretch, as though some underused part of my mind is stirring again. Even if I never use “phantom” in conversation, the very act of noticing, logging and revising it breaks the slide into passive, superficial focus.

Additionally, there's a diary-keeping element to it – it functions as something of a diary, a record of where I’ve been reading, what I’ve been thinking about and who I’ve been hearing.

It's not as if it’s an easy habit to maintain. It is frequently extremely impractical. If I’m reading on the subway, I have to pause in the middle, take out my phone and type “millennialism” into my digital document while trying not to elbow the person pressed against me. It can reduce my pace to a frustrating crawl. (The e-reader, with its integrated dictionary, is much kinder). And then there’s the revising (which I often forget to do), dutifully scrolling through my growing vocabulary collection like I’m studying for a vocabulary test.

Realistically, I integrate perhaps five percent of these terms into my everyday speech. “Incorrigible” was adopted. “mournful” too. But the majority of them remain like exhibits – appreciated and listed but rarely handled.

Nevertheless, it’s rendered my thinking much sharper. I find myself reaching less frequently for the same tired handful of adjectives, and more often for something exact and muscular. Few things are more gratifying than discovering the exact word you were seeking – like locating the lost puzzle piece that snaps the picture into position.

In an era when our gadgets drain our focus with relentless effectiveness, it feels rebellious to use my own as a tool for deliberate thinking. And it has restored to me something I worried I’d lost – the pleasure of engaging a mind that, after a long time of lazy scrolling, is finally waking up again.