I think there are two distinct categories of things here: daily habits and on…

I think there are two distinct categories of things here: daily habits and one-off tasks. For habits, it's always the same: read, exercise, treat food as fuel and nothing else, abstain from tempting vices, show love for wife and children, etc. What makes these hard is that their benefits don't have the same concentrated impact as the one I described in the op, but they are more important.