⏪ June 2026

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It’s the last day of June, so we’re revisiting a few of the ideas we featured this month.

Keep reading for our June 2026 Recap 👇

But first…

This morning, my daughter gave me the perfect excuse not to make my bed.

She spilled milk in it.

Which got me wondering: if making your bed is such a small thing, why do so many accomplished people swear by it—and just as many dismiss it?

That question sits at the center of one of the most enduring debates in personal development. Should you make your bed every morning?

To answer that question, we looked to authors who make the case for it and the case against it. Here’s what we found…

The 2024 Lancet Commission on Dementia found that approximately 45% of dementia cases worldwide could be prevented or delayed by addressing 14 modifiable risk factors.

Low education is a risk factor on that list. Not because smart people don’t get dementia, but because lifelong intellectual engagement builds something called cognitive reserve — the brain’s capacity to tolerate damage before symptoms appear.

At a glance:

• Novelty is the variable that matters.

• Cognitive reserve is real and buildable.

• Brain training apps mostly don’t transfer.

Summer gets a reputation for killing productivity.

People take vacations. Kids are home. The office is half-empty. It's easy to feel like nothing gets done.

But is that actually true?

A couple of books suggest summer's slower pace may be an advantage. But we found another book that makes the case for the opposing view. So who’s right?

Does Summer Actually Make You More Productive?

In 1951, Jack Bogle wrote his Princeton thesis arguing that mutual funds could not reliably beat the market after costs.

Nobody in the industry believed him. His idea sat for 25 years.

Then, in 1974, he was fired from the firm he had built. Bogle used the forced exit to finally act on his thesis, and he launched the first index fund for individual investors.

That is how Vanguard started…

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