Having spent roughly 15 years in two companies that took continuous improvement very seriously, my main takeaway is that it is relentless.
I’ve started paying a lot more attention to celebration of successes and failures in continuous improvement because of it. Because if you never stop to celebrate successful changes or learning from the unsuccessful changes it really becomes a treadmill without an end. Which is demotivating.
It really helps to think about a rhythm for continuous improvement with pauses / low activity periods for the same reason. Currently thinking through what a continuous planning setup for our teams would look like and this has been on my mind a lot. Quarterly planning rhythm has its advantages too 
(never thought I would say that out loud)