Sure, there are two ways to work on the problem. One is to increase willpower. The other is to learn tricks not to use it. I agree the second one is better. But let's take this back to the context of Less Wrong and its effects.

Paul Graham's tricks include turning off the internet. The "distractions and temptations" he wants you to remove from your office are things like Less Wrong. The existence of Less Wrong is the existence of a temptation tuned to those who wish to become more rational and more effective at achieving their goals. This makes it just as bad a thing in Graham's analysis as in mine!

"Working on stuff you like", and "rationalizing that stuff you like is work" are very different. The former is great when you can do it. The latter is the type of rationalization that Paul talked about in his recent essay Self-Indulgence, where the wost time-wasters are those that don't feel like time-wasters:

The most dangerous way to lose time is not to spend it having fun, but to spend it doing fake work. When you spend time having fun, you know you're being self-indulgent. Alarms start to go off fairly quickly. If I woke up one morning and sat down on the sofa and watched TV all day, I'd feel like something was terribly wrong. Just thinking about it makes me wince. I'd start to feel uncomfortable after sitting on a sofa watching TV for 2 hours, let alone a whole day.

And yet I've definitely had days when I might as well have sat in front of a TV all day—days at the end of which, if I asked myself what I got done that day, the answer would have been: basically, nothing. I feel bad after these days too, but nothing like as bad as I'd feel if I spent the whole day on the sofa watching TV. If I spent a whole day watching TV I'd feel like I was descending into perdition. But the same alarms don't go off on the days when I get nothing done, because I'm doing stuff that seems, superficially, like real work.

That is what I am claiming Less Wrong is - something that seems, superficially, like real personal growth work.