4 Things You Need to Make Exercise a Habit

It'll keep exercise from feeling like a monotonous slog.

How it helps: Long-term goals will help get you to the gym, but smaller wins throughout the workout will make you feel like each session matters. "When I work with competitive athletes, we set a daily target," says Jenny Susser, PhD, a clinical sports psychologist in Huntington, New York. "Something that's challenging but doable." We're not talking about tacking an extra 20 minutes onto your cardio routine or ditching the 5-pound dumbbells for 15s—more like running .2 mph faster than you did last week, holding planks for 35 seconds instead of 30 or doing 10 reps of your go-to resistance moves per set instead of 8.