Diminishing returns have a shadow twin that almost nobody names: diminishing novelty. In the 11th century, the Persian philosopher and physician Avicenna described a phenomenon in his Canon of Medicine he called 'habituation of the faculty' — the sensory and cognitive systems stop registering what has become familiar, not because the stimulus has weakened, but because the perceiving apparatus has learned to filter it out. He was talking about medicinal remedies losing their felt effect, but the structure applies with unsettling precision to fitness tips. The fifth time someone hears 'keep your core braced during deadlifts,' the instruction isn't being processed anymore — it's being filed. What changes this isn't repetition, and it isn't urgency. It's recontextualization: giving the same truth a different entry point — a sensation to hunt for instead of a rule to follow, a comparison to something the person already knows intimately, a consequence they haven't yet imagined. For your Saturday workout and for the advice you give patients on Monday: the tip hasn't expired. The angle has.

Think of a piece of advice you give regularly — to a patient, a staff member, or yourself about training. What sensation, analogy, or consequence have you never used to deliver it?

Drawing from Islamic Galenic medicine / Avicennan philosophy of perception — Avicenna (Ibn Sina, Canon of Medicine / Al-Qānūn fī al-Ṭibb, c. 1025 CE)