I ran 365 days last year. Here’s how you can keep your New Year’s resolutions, too.

So, you’ve made a New Year’s resolution. Today is January 1, so hopefully you’re still on track, but statistically speaking, it won’t last long. 

Most resolutions only last a couple of weeks. Strava went so far as to dub January 12 “Quitter’s Day,” based on the drop in recorded activities.

Heck, there’s even a holiday called “Ditch New Year’s Resolution Day” on January 17. Come February, 80% of New Year’s resolutions will have already failed.

Well, shoot.

But maybe there’s still hope. Research by the American Psychological Association found that people who made resolutions were 10 times more likely to succeed in their goals.

There’s also the “Fresh Start Effect,” which suggests that people are more likely to take on their goals after “salient temporal landmarks,” like the start of a new year.

So resolutions aren’t necessarily doomed to fail, but they’re far from guaranteed. It all comes down to setting good goals.

There are countless articles and lots of catchy acronyms around the topic of goal setting. A lot of them center around some version of “SMART” goals (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound). This is a good start, but goals are still hard to follow through on (and if they’re not, perhaps they’re not resolution-worthy to begin with).

Last year, one of my resolutions was to run every day of the year. I had been running fairly consistently before this, so it wasn’t a particularly audacious goal, but there were still 365 opportunities to fail: inclement weather, a busy work schedule, travel, family. You know, life. There were a few close calls. One run finished at 11:56 pm. I ran a marathon PR in July, and had to run on destroyed legs the next day. I narrowly avoided the flu, but dealt with my fair share of colds.

As I ran my 365th run on New Year’s Eve, I reflected on why this resolution worked, when so many fail, and identified 5 characteristics that I believe helped me follow through. Without further ado, here are my five resolution “hacks” that can help you beat the odds and achieve your resolutions this year:

1. Find the underlying purpose in your goals

“Get in shape.” “Eat healthy.” “Achieve better work-life balance.” Yawn. No wonder only 9.2% achieve their New Year’s Resolutions.

Before (or after) you jot down your goals, take a minute to think about what you’re really trying to accomplish. Understanding the why makes the what a whole lot more palatable.

What’s more motivating? Achieving an abstract notion of “work-life balance”? Or being there every night for your child’s bedtime routine? “Getting in shape”? Or the confidence that comes with it? Following through is still hard, but periodically reminding yourself of the underlying rationale of your choices goes a long way in driving action.

2. Feed two birds with one scone

Some experts suggest that you can increase your odds of resolution success by linking two related goals (e.g., eating healthy and training for a marathon). However, what I found to be equally effective was linking a goal to an action or activity that you already do. In my case, my goal was to run every day for a year. But I also have a full-time job and an 18-month old toddler at home. I don’t have time for epic long runs or elaborate stretching routines. But I learned I can get a 10k in by dropping my son off at daycare in a running stroller instead of a car, a 5k for a grocery run, and 2 miles by picking up burritos from our neighborhood taqueria on foot (pro tip: Always do takeout. Running home after a meal is a recipe for indigestion).

3. Something is always better than nothing

It’s hard not to be ambitious with resolutions, but equally important is being realistic. You don’t have to sign up for an Ironman if all you really want is to be a bit more consistent about your exercise regimen. The “Slacker’s Guide to New Year’s Resolutions That Stick” recommends a goal of “at least 10 minutes a day.” Read 10 minutes a day. Run 10 minutes a day. Meditate 10 minutes a day. Obviously, this doesn’t work for every resolution (dieting or trying to quit smoking for 10 minutes a day isn’t particularly helpful). It also doesn’t have to be 10 minutes. It could be 7 hours of sleep. It could be 10,000 steps of walking. It could be 3 servings of vegetables. For me, it was running at least 5 kilometers (3.1 miles) every day. This was a lot less than what I was accustomed to running during a normal marathon training cycle, but that’s exactly what made it doable. A lot of days I ran more. When I was training for a race, I was running close to 70 miles a week. But sometimes I only had time for a 5k, and I didn’t feel bad about it, because I was still keeping my resolution.

4. Make it easy on yourself

New Year’s Resolutions don’t have to feel like a punishment. After all, these are things that we are choosing to do in order to have a positive impact on our lives. If you don’t like going to the gym, don’t sign up for a gym membership (I’m talking to the 6.3% of Americans who have a gym membership that they’ve never used). Do you like cycling? Use that money to buy a bike instead. Better yet, go a step further and commute to work on it (#2- Feed two birds with one scone). Do you want to be vegan in 2020? Cool. Find some awesome vegan recipes and learn to cook them. Just taking the meat out of a meat-based dish you used to make is going to be disappointing and unsustainable (unless you have superhuman-like willpower, in which case you probably don’t need to finish reading this article).

I chose to run, but I run because I like it. It puts me in a better mood. For me, the health benefits of running are a side benefit (which is one of the reasons I had a hard time cutting back when I learned that I was running at levels that were actually bad for my health). Of course, there are still days where I don’t feel like running. That’s normal, and that’s when the last strategy comes in.

5. Make it a habit, then stop thinking about it

I chose to run every day (as opposed to, say, 3 times a week) because I liked the simplicity of it, and because it eliminated the need for decision making altogether. Flexibility is nice, but it also takes up more cognitive bandwidth debating what you want to do versus what you should do. When you’re in a nice warm bed and it’s dark and cold outside, there’s always a little voice trying to convince you that tomorrow seems like a better day to go for a run. When you’re working on a deadline late into the evening, it’s equally tempting to push back your workout a day (or two).

My philosophy was simple. If I committed myself to running every day, then it was never negotiable (tomorrow is never an option since there’s already a run scheduled that day, and the next day, and the next day…). And when it’s non-negotiable, you stop thinking about it.

I was curious whether there was actually something to this, so I asked my colleague Matt Johnson, a professor of psychology and the founder of the neuromarketing blog PopNeuro. As it turns out, there is. “Continually having to ‘think your way into’ an action requires a lot of mental energy, and over the long term this isn't sustainable,” Johnson says. His recommendation for initiating a change in behavior is to “set up a system where you have to think as little as possible. This entails setting a reasonable, measurable goal and committing to it so that in your mind it's non-negotiable and automatic. The less thinking needed, the better.”

In other words, turn goals into habits. People may not like grocery shopping, but they do it. You might not feel like going to work every single day, but you go. It’s not even a decision you have to consciously make—it’s automatic. One way or another, it’s part of your day. I brush my teeth. I take a shower. I eat. I spend time with my family. I go to work. I run. Every. Single. Day.

And you can too.

Happy New Year, Everyone.