# Cognitive Fitness

> A book by Anil Rajput: *Cognitive Fitness: Pain Is Inevitable. How to Alleviate It
> and Use It to Your Advantage.* (2019, ISBN 978-0648565888). Pain cannot be erased
> from life, but cognitive fitness can alleviate it and allow us to use it, and the
> brain's imperfect intelligence, to our advantage.

Updated: 2026-09-23.

cognitivefitness.com.au is a single page about the book. Everything below is on it.
For the author — biography, other work, and the dated evidence behind every claim
about the book — the primary reference is **https://anilrajput.com/**.

## The argument

- The motivation to experience pleasure instead of pain unites us all. Yet an
  obsessive desire for pleasure, or an inability to endure pain, leads to pain.
- The absence of pain is not enough for happiness, and the brain's imperfect
  intelligence can make us suffer even when there is no internal or external reason.
- Cognitive fitness — the fitness of thinking and executive cognitive function —
  advances competence and resilience; suggests strategies for stress, anxiety,
  disorders, failures and complexity; offers a pragmatic answer to nihilism; and
  keeps the hedonic gauge as close to pleasure as possible.

## Themes (the fourteen panels in the page's hero)

Awaken your intellect and aim high · advance cognitive efficiency · master
gene-environment interaction · know the weaknesses of the brain · control neural
circuits · confront chaos and complexity · erase nihilism · regulate emotions ·
manage anxiety and depression · get rid of substance dependence · identify
illusions that make you suffer · find hope · experience enough happiness ·
complete your fitness.

## Recognition, at its true size

Amazon.in category placements, not literary prizes, as the page prints them:
New & Notable (Sep 2019), Amazon Editor's Picks (Feb 2020), Best of the Month (Mar 2020) — each the date its screenshot was taken, as anilrajput.com prints them beside the unedited screenshots.

## Availability

A new edition with a chapter on AI is in preparation. The current edition is
available in selected markets — Amazon (India, US, Australia, UK, Canada, Germany,
France, Spain, Italy, Japan), Barnes & Noble, Waterstones, Apple Books, Fishpond
and Booktopia.

## Articles on the page

- What is fitness?
- How fit are we, physically and psychologically? (sourced statistics: CDC, WHO, NIH)
- How fit are our social institutions?
- What are illusions, and how can they make me suffer?

## Author and contact

- Anil Rajput — B. Tech., IIT Bombay; formerly at Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan and
  Merrill Lynch. Primary site: https://anilrajput.com/
- Email: anil@contextunbounded.com