The biggest improvements to my self and my life came after adopting stringent morning and nighttime routines. Having these routines to bookend my day really helps me keep focused on my goals and somehow makes the chaos of the day more manageable. The most important habit I've adopted is writing in a journal of sorts, 2 or 3 pages of freewriting each morning just to get everything out of my head and onto paper so I can focus. It can be anything, I can write about how much I hate writing in the morning, but typically it is a review of how I did yesterday or a list of all the things I want to get done today and why they matter. After that free-writing, I will write a paragraph or so that I call my Daily Gratitude. I simply write about what I am thankful for at that moment and why. I'm the most cynical, apathetic bastard you'll ever meet, so getting this gratitude out early in the morning is extremely difficult for me, but also extremely important. After that, I write 5 bullets of the 5 most important tasks that I want to get done that day. These are the 5 things that, if I did nothing else, I could look back and say I had a good and productive day. I write in moleskin notebooks so all of this isn't too daunting, but it does take a dedicated 30-45 minutes with my coffee each morning.
Overall, I think self-improvement should be a daily goal to strive for. You just need to focus on getting 1% better each day and make it a habit. That way, in 6 months or a year or 10 years you can look back and say that those 1%'s added up to massive change in your life.