I made a comment quite a while back that agrees with and expands on your view a bit:

I don't buy the "I'll improve other areas of my life and then I'll have success with women." approach either. It's like saying "I'll improve my grades in these other classes and my chemistry grade will improve." Or "I'll try harder at work and read more, and that will lead to my physical fitness improving." No. If you want to improve in chemistry, you work on that subject. If you want to be more physically fit, you get your ass to a gym and stop eating based on whether you have nothing else to do. And if you want success with women/a girlfriend you actively pursue environments and situations which put you in the position to achieve that. "Focusing on other areas" is another way of saying "I want to stay in my comfort zone and hope these women can smell my success and ambition from the bathroom at the bar." The truth is, one night out where you insist on interaction (and accept being uncomfortable doing it) will do a metric shitload more for you than your promotion or your ability to "almost dunk, like, I can grab the rim comfortably now." Confidence, whether we want to believe it or not, does not come in an all-purpose form; it has to be cultivated within the context where you want it applied. Any successful guy who goes out and approaches new women for the first time can tell you that, probably after a little shudder.

Tl;dr: finding a gf without working on that goal specifically is like expecting an item from Amazon without ever placing the order.

Edit: You guys raised some good points. I fully support self-improvent; I just wouldn't advise it hindering going out/dating. If you include your skills with women in your concept of self-improvent, you're doing it right.