Willpower and infrastructure
To do things I usually take the view of Action Potential to visualize what drives and prevents me from doing things, which then reduces things into either "lets increase value of something" or "lets decrease friction of something" because in both cases I will find said thing easier to undertake.
Lets now focus on the latter, reducing friction is often the most effective and the least used way to manipulate the Action Potential for a given task. Something has low friction when it is easy, quick, simple, when its free, when it's automatic, etc. Those things happen when we are very strong and able, lifting things, running somewhere, are free when we are strong, are easy when we are quick. Building things and fixing things is easier when we are experts and overcoming emotional turmoil is easier when we have the tools and skills to do so. In addition to that, there is another way to reduce friction without being better at said task, without having relavent knowledge or skills and without necessarily being strong, that way is called willpower.
Willpower is the ability to push and do something despite it's difficulty, despite it's initial friction, it's the ability to stomach difficulties and pain, usually in the short term to be able to get more things done. The ability to study 12 hours straight because you will fail the test otherwise (of course this is affected by the value of succeeding and the negative value of failing but aside from those the ability to push through the obvious extreme difficulty in cases like those will be your will)
Having a strong willpower is like a superpower, it's a trumpcard you can use anywhere, you can expand it as fuel to build and achieve, to overcome and challenge, and to push through the most difficult things. It's the ability to become a monstertruck and climb through rocky mountains and thick jungles. A powerful general purpose tool.
On the other side of this coin there is infrastructure, which is the foundation that makes doing a specific thing easier, or in some cases possible. It's the bridge, the road, the habit, the tool, knowledge, skill or social contract. It leads to things being organic, smooth, automatic in a much more predictable way.
Having good infrastructure will always be better than using willpower for the same task, the conflict arises when you don't have that infrastructure, do you invest energy and willpower to build it? Do you invest those directly in the task? It's not a black and white answer, nor is it a simple question.
The advantage of infrastructure over direct willpower is longevity, it's sustainability, durability and predictability. It's building a foundation not only for the desired action now, but for every future one that could be used with the same tools.
The advantage of willpower over infrastructure is the immediacy, the dynamicity that comes from being ready to do things you are not ready to do, to adapt, it's speed and agility and it increases the window of ability for everything in turn.
The cases where the answer is easiest is when you build for the future, when you are facing a difficult situation that you know you will face again, in cases like those it's always better to invest the time, effort and willpower to build the base for the future, it will be more difficult than doing it directly more often than not but it leads to easier interactions with the same problem domain in the future.
Now, it's often tempting to take this approach with everything, to automate anything that could be automated to formulate what can be formulated and have a pattern ready for every situation. In reality this is not only impossible, it is also highly detrimental, it leads to frustration, waste of resources, and oftentimes bad results. It also leads to slower learning, the increased time investment needed for building a good infrastructure increases the length of feedback cycle, sometimes by a very large factor, causing us to chase wrong leads, work towards none important problems and generally bark at the wrong tree.
Willpower is like a huge 4x4 truck making its way in a jungle, amazingly strong, steamrolling its way forward and achieving incredible feats. On the other end of the spectrum there is a crummy, old transit track with gasping engine making its way on the main road. The transit will almost always travel farther than the 4x4, it will expand less energy and do more, reach from point a to b faster and with less resources. The 4x4 will be able to deviate more easily, to go to point c instead, maybe stop by d and e on the way and maybe also discover that actually point b is not that interesting and e is a better option. The ideal would be a car that can easily and efficiently drive on the main road, but that can go off-road, to explore, shortcut or reach places that are not on the main road, make sure to be that car, make sure to build yourself to be that car, and surround people who can do the same.