Yes, I believe the gp has missed the point of the article.
The lesson from "your to-do list isn't difficult, it's impossible" is not nihilism. The point is not that no one is good at anything so why bother; the point is that the feeling of overwhelm, dread, and depression from an impossible- seeming to-do list is rooted in false assumptions. Your to-do list doesn't seem impossibly long, it IS impossibly long! You are born with a to-do list and you will die with a to-do list - but that's OK. We're all in the same boat.
Another helpful way to think about this is a math analogy. Your knowledge is a circle or sphere that has your literal area of expertise. The more your learn, the larger it gets - but you also gain more contact with the unknown.
That is the lesson. Imposter syndrome demystified. Only a fool feels in complete control. One simply does what one can.
Exactly.
Long ago, I built a task management app for myself and my company. After using it for a while, I looked at the overview and found that I had something like 768 hours of Urgent and High priority tasks due in the next two weeks. There are only 336 hours total in two weeks (nevermind sleeping, eating, traveling, etc...). Moreover, this was not atypical of the list of things on my plate, it was just that now it had been collected as actual data.
No amount of working faster, trimming, delegating, etc. was going to get this done. The realization is that things WILL slip, even so much that some never get done. The goal is just to keep the critical things from slipping so much that you are taken out of the game. Also recognize that this is OK, and don't beatup myself or others about it (and that beating on myself or others only distracts and prevents the tasks from getting done). Just get on with what you can get on with.
The analogy I use to explain how the acquisition of knowledge leads to humility is akin to climbing. You start in a ditch and can only see a single mountain that you must ascend to be knowledgeable. Once you reach the peak of that mountain you are greeted with an entire new range of mountains that would remain hidden from you without the benefit of your newfound perspective. You may also safely assume that beyond each of those mountains lies yet another set of partially or completely obscured mountain ranges.
As Socrates said, "if I am wise it is only in that I know what I do not know."
And indeed there is always more fitness that I need.
Outside of a goal race, you shouldn't suffer when you run, especially 'a lot'. You are tearing down muscles and training energy systems that are inefficient.
Slow down. Walk. Fragment runs into multiple runs. Run doubles. You'll get faster, faster. Add volume at your new, sane pace and new, sane volume up to 40-60 miles/week.
Once you've achieved the slow end of 'adult fast', say sub-20m/40m/90m for 5k/10k/half, you can revisit suffering during training. You still probably shouldn't.
Of course if you want/like to suffer or can only run 4 times a week at peak heat during a Georgia summer then all of this is out the window.
I'm not much into sport, but I had the impression that training was above the goal.
Like, you try to get into a situation that is harder than reality, so when you finally do the actual thing, it will be easier.
Often the strategy is to adopt both, until you gradually converge on some target (pace over distance). Where that target is is a different issue.
Plus, fresh of the couch everything hurts. Some fit person's lungs might be burning, their legs might feel heavy, but the not-fit person has three different cramps, blisters, achy feet, shoulder pain, toe pain, neck pain, lung pain... that gets better fairly quickly with training.
I feel the whole "it never hurts less you just get faster" viewpoint is demoralizing & misleading, which doesn't help when people are struggling to stay fit.
Say you make 100 decisions in a day, and your expertise yields an obvious, high-quality answer in 98 of them. When you think back to that day, the remaining 2 (which didn’t so yield) will dominate your memory of what happened.
In that case, it will feel like all you did was make non-rigorous, poorly-grounded guesses … but that impression is wrong.
Einstein probably felt like he was winging it with General Relativity, until he wasn’t.
High-tech feeling like magic is something that comes to mind.
When I try new ideas, I sometimes get the feeling they have merit in a way I can't explain. So, when people ask my why I'm working on X or Y, I can't really give them satisfying answers.