Conscientiousness, a factor in the Five Factor Model of personality, measures something like this. Specifically, the aspect of Industriousness.
However, it's very hard to measure, because virtually any test that measures a person's planning ability almost invariably ends up measuring IQ instead. Basically, the best way to test this right now is to ask a bunch of people around you how "hard working" you are and average the results. Still, it's accurate enough to be reasonably predictive of a lot of interesting phenomena.
I've tried a lot of things to improve my level of organization and productivity with...modest success. Some things that (I think) have helped me:
- Seek out and take on responsibility (work, family, community, etc.) It's painful adjusting at first, but I get used to it and the satisfaction of being depended upon is motivating.
- When faced with a stressful level of responsibility, remember that you will live through it. I used to procrastinate like mad because of a fear of failure. Keeping that thought in mind ("I will live through this") calmed my nerves somewhat. Now I still worry, and still procrastinate, but it's not as bad.
- Write down what you want your life to be like in 1, 3, 5, and maybe even 10 years. Come back to it every now and then. I did this 5 years ago, and while I haven't achieved everything, I've achieved some of what I wanted. I'll take it as a victory.
Basically as I see it, using every bit of rational intelligence to tame and condition the rest of their being (emotions, health, social, will, etc), develop all the other forms of intelligence.
The 'dark path' for most seems to be an ironic world view, which leads to a sarcastic mindset and ultimately nihilism if not contained. Hence a major lifelong requirement is to really learn what self-love means.
I have no idea what my IQ is, I just feel it's too much or too little for my own sake; case in point I finally stopped hating myself and learned self love at 34. Changed my life, like step 1 of a major transformation.
The only recommendation I'm certain helps everyone is Stoicism.
This is a perfectly fine coping mechanism for big-picture stuff (environ. protection, climate change, genotoxic materials, migration, politics); it only becomes highly problematic when you use it as the coping mechanism for everything.
> Stoicism
Depending on the construction stoicism can come quite close to nihilistic world views, actually.
About irony/sarcasm: I used to think exactly like you. I must say it was totally flawed. I don't know how to word this scientifically (and please understand I'm not religious): sarcasm hurts your soul, your heart, your mind, your spirit. It's like drugs: short term good but really bad long term.
It helps for some time and then slowly eats at you. A sarcastic person is in effect trading the possibility of hope for the comfort of accepting things. There is a way where you keep both, through forgiving, through understanding, with humility.
Humor gets a pass when it speaks of bad things, or in a bad manner, because it's a way of denouncing said things/manners. Certainly not to validate it. That's where sarcasm has its place IMHO: as a very bad manner that humor serves to show.
About Stoicism: that's true. Hence why I always preface with self-love, because the Stoic apparatus is quite unable to speak of this in modern terms. In general I agree with Ferris on this though: Stoicism is the best operating system for the human mind. Now that I know, I see it and find it in so many things, people, the good side of life (and it seems quite missing in many a miserable path).
I haven't done badly in life, but I've always felt I could have done a lot better if I had better executive functioning. If somehow I could have traded some of my IQ points for better executive functioning points (is there such a thing?), I'd happily take that trade.