Kindling a Fire: Cognitive Fitness for the Summer

By Cincinnati Country Day Head of School Rob Zimmerman ‘98

If you’re anything like me, May arrives with the usual litany of healthy summer intentions: exercise more, sleep longer, eat better. These intentions are noble and necessary. I know I’m not the only educator (or adult) who could use a little more physical fitness when summer rolls around and my calendar opens up.

But there is another kind of fitness that receives far less attention, even though it may be the most endangered species in 2026: cognitive fitness. I don’t exactly mean intelligence in the sense of IQ or grades. Rather, cognitive fitness represents the underlying capacities that make learning (and a meaningful life) possible: focus, attention, curiosity, frustration tolerance, and the resilience to stick with something that isn’t immediately rewarding.

These days, when the mind is trained on constant novelty (like short videos and infinite scroll) it becomes harder to do the slow human work that is essential to school and life. To be clear, this isn’t simply about laziness; it is, like physical fitness, about training. For example, attention is plastic in the sense that it is trainable in both directions. We become, to a remarkable extent, what we repeatedly practice.

The good news is that summer’s slower schedule can become a perfect training ground for cognitive fitness just as much as physical fitness. Think of it as off-season workouts – time to learn a new pitch or put on 20 pounds of muscle (but for the brain).

With that in mind, here are a few deliberate practices that can help protect (or build) the mind’s capacity for depth:

1. Choose one “long-form” project and stay with it.

Choose a passion project, but one that can’t be mastered or completed quickly. Maybe it’s a long book or a multi-week building project or a new instrument. The point is not variety but continuity over an entire summer. If you can train your mind to withstand short-term pain for long-term gain, you’ll be pushing back on the instant gratification that the world constantly offers. 

2. Read like a grown-up: slowly, daily, without multitasking.

This is the simplest and hardest practice. Set a modest daily minimum (at least 30 minutes) of uninterrupted reading. If possible, make it a physical book. If you want to make it more ambitious, read a book that does not immediately gratify you. Pick a long classic novel or a dense history book. The ability to move through initial resistance towards sustained focus is cognitive fitness in its purest form. 

3. Practice “frustration reps.”

Every student has something they quit the moment it gets hard: math problems, writing long essays, a new piece of music, a chess endgame, a coding bug. Summer is the time to build the tolerance that school sometimes requests but life absolutely requires. Pick a task and stay with the hard part for ten minutes longer than you want to. Not forever, just longer. Those extra ten minutes are the reps, and they will build your cognitive endurance like runner training for a marathon. 

To prove that these are achievable, not just aspirational, let me give a somewhat eccentric suggestion that I have actually used with my own kids: go to an art museum, pick a painting, and stare at it for an hour. Don’t move on or talk to your friend or check your phone. Just be still and look. At first, you’ll be bored. Then you’ll be irritated. Then you’ll feel panic and existential dread. But, if you stay with it, you’ll begin to notice new details and, if you’re lucky, a sense of calm will settle over your mind.

This moment of peace is the real lesson of the exercise: Attention is a form of freedom. To be able to direct your mind, rather than have it directed for you, is to possess a kind of sovereignty. It means you can read a hard book, learn a new skill, sit with an uncomfortable thought, or have a real conversation without mentally reaching for the emergency exit.

These days, when we have built an entire economy around capturing attention, this skill can feel like a superpower. But it takes training. Because if you don’t choose what you pay attention to, something else will choose for you.

So here is my modest summer proposal: Treat cognitive fitness the way you treat physical fitness. Let the long book be your mile-long run. Let the hard project be your weight room. Let boredom be your cardio: unpleasant at first, oddly restorative once you stop panicking. If you can stick with it, you’ll hit the next school year in the best shape of your life.