Take this for example. Here you recommend how to philosophically approach the lack of will power problem. You say that instead to trying to learn how to control emotions better you recommend trying to instead figure out the lack of skills because of which these emotions arise and become better at those skills. According to my understanding this philosophical way of solving the problem is better rather than going the self help route. There is a lot of self help stuff (Jocko Willink is one I know) on how to develop more will power.
Take this situation: I prefer wasting time by watching TikTok reels instead of studying. Is self help methodology way of building more will power so that you can spend more time studying even if you don’t enjoy it better or or going the philosophy way better?
A related problem which I talked about here also is that learning skills the philosophical way and building will power the self help way both feel like effort. But philosophical way is clear that you shouldn’t expect revolutionary changes but evolutionary changes instead. Whereas self help says that once you build will power and you start doing the right thing you will enjoy it. And even if you don’t enjoy it you know the reward will be bigger like getting good grades on your degree which will mean better job higher pay etc. So it is kind of advertising revolutionary changes.
Also in the philosophical way I’m not clear about the goals. How to evaluate goals within the path towards the final goal which is me becoming better at problem solving. Even if I become better at underlying skills what happens next? As you said
What sorts of something elses or underlying causes could be relevant? Here are a few but you could brainstorm many others.
It could be the case that there are many other something elses apart from these. This seems worrisome to me because it could be the case that I could be stuck at this level forever of improving at willpower forever and end up not making any progress towards my final goal. Is this right? That if one follows the philosophy way one could end up spending a lot time developing basic skills and take a long time to get around to making any progress towards cleaning up the mess in their life?