Rituals
I try to follow my tradition of writing two entries a day. It's not (that) easy knowing that I've already written more than 500 notebook entries. I believe though that only constant practice of the same things can better my skills. I call this constant practice a "ritual". The more rituals you have - like waking up daily at the same time, exercising, learning English, et cetera - the more settled and disciplined you will be.
However, we are so complicated that no one thing can play the ultimate role in our development. Rituals can make you enslaved, and, while they work to develop our personality, they often reduce our uniqueness.Look at professional sportsmen, for example. Plenty of them are so focused on their specific sport rituals that they are not interested in anything else. That's why I think that we should change at least part of our rituals from time to time to feel progress in our development.
(I just made a few small word/phrase changes - but overall this is really good! I agree with you too, it's hard to build the right routine, but i think it's worth it. You just can't be so rigid that you lose yourself at the same time. It's really impressive that you have kept up with writing notebook entries for so long)