Long-term goals can be, well, long term.

It can be hard to maintain your momentum when the end is a long way off. Whether your goal is losing weight, earning a degree, running every day for a year, or something else, the way to stay strong is to celebrate the small milestones.

I have run 66 days in a row. That means I only have 300 days left. That still sounds like a lot, but it’s a lot less than 366, so I’m celebrating. In just a hundred days, I’ll only have 200 left. I’m going to celebrate then too.

Break your goal into small chunks and celebrate every milestone. How am I going to celebrate? Go for a run, of course.

Just before the new year, a wonderful member of the Potterhead Running Club (PHRC) designed a fun reading challenge. Sixty badges could be earned by reading sixty books in sixty different categories. I finished my sixtieth book today (thus earning my sixtieth badge.)

I didn’t intend to do this challenge in 63 days, but once I started, I couldn’t stop. Every book I read fit a category, so I started knocking them off fast.

I read cookbooks, graphic novels, epic fantasies, mysteries, romances, non-fiction, YA novels, middle-grade novels, picture books, classics, and audiobooks. It was a lot of fun, but I’m ready to get back to my life and read books that I want to read instead of books I have to read (even though I enjoyed most of the books I read.)

What is super obvious is that if you give me a badge, I will do about anything. I’m running every day for a year to earn virtual badges. I’m running three marathons in three weekends to earn a virtual badge (not to mention all the real medals.)

If I could just find programs that gave out virtual badges for weight loss and publishing books, I’d have met all my goals. (I have tried a few of the weight loss programs, but they were sooooo stingy with their badges, I never stuck with it. Come on, it’s not like they cost anything.)

Do you have any crazy goals you are working on? Do virtual badges entice you? How do you reward yourself? Someone once told me I was like Jeremy the crow from Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH because I am obsessed with shiny objects. Guilty as charged.

You have a week left in the month. Seven days can go by so fast. Why not add a little time to your project? Five minutes can be enough. If you did something five minutes longer each day this week, you would have worked a half-hour more on the project. Five minutes doesn’t sound like much, because it isn’t, but a half-hour is substantial.

Your little extra doesn’t have to be time. Perhaps you are writing a book or short story. Why not add one hundred more words than you scheduled? Or if you are scrapbooking, like I am, you can do one more page than you had planned.

You won’t notice the five minutes passing at the time, but you’ll be pleased with what you got done this week.

“Time is what we want most, but what we use worst.” William Penn

Two weeks an ideal length of time. It’s long enough to complete a goal, but short enough to keep your momentum going.

Why not pick a goal or project that you can finish in two weeks, and get started today. Break it into fourteen chunks and put it on your daily calendar. You’ll leap for joy on leap day when you reach your goal.

My 2018 scrapbook has been sitting in Shutterfly, unfinished, for a while now. It is fifty pages long, so if I journal and decorate four pages a day, I’ll be done by February 29th. I got behind on my scrapbooking, so it will feel good to get one done. Then I can use those 50% coupons Shutterfly keeps sending me.

Good luck with your project. Setting deadlines for goals is a great way to beat procrastination, something most of us need to conquer.

How did your goals and resolutions go this year? Are they all completed? If not, can you finish them in the next week? If you can, do so.

Obviously, if you gained ten pounds from Halloween to Christmas, you aren’t going to meet your weight goals in a week. However, you could turn your diet around and get in the habit of drinking water instead of spiked egg nog. A week of healthy eating will improve how you feel on January 1st.

Perhaps you planned to declutter your house. A great way to do this is with your Christmas decorations. Instead of just stuffing them all in bins, look at each one wherever it is in your house and decide if you really like it. It might help if you take a picture of the item so you can study it carefully. If you display it out of habit, consider if you want to have it in your house next Christmas. When you are done, you should only have decorations that you love (and hopefully fewer boxes to store.)

You can do a lot in a week. If the kids are home, enlist their help. Make the resolution a family project, and it will probably go faster.

We’ll set new goals in 2020, so clear the 2019 table. (And write your thank you cards.)

One of the things I want to focus on this year is Christmas music. Now that it’s after Thanksgiving, I love listening to the festive songs on the radio, but I rarely play all the Christmas CDs I have. This year I’m going to change that.

I plan to listen to a different CD each day. I don’t have 24 CDs so I checked some out from the library and added them to my iTunes. I tried to get a variety so I have country stars, English chants, and children’s choirs. I’ll intersperse them with my own favorite Christmas CDs.

The new songs may not all be good, but I’ll get to experience lots of Christmas music which should be a fun Christmas goal.

As of today, there are forty-nine days left in 2019. Yowser! Not even fifty. How are your goals going? I, of course, am behind on everything but my reading goal (I knocked that one out of the park.)

As I always say, the year’s not over until the ball drops and kisses are exchanged. Even then, you can always work on your goals in 2020. But for 2019, the clock is ticking.

We all know that December is a crazy, busy month, so why not take these two weeks before Thanksgiving and pick one of your goals to focus on. With the help of my friend, Judy, I’m working on my weight loss goal by counting my calories. It’s annoying but necessary.

Did I mention that Thanksgiving is two weeks from tomorrow? (I’m talking about it today to make up for missing the fifty-day mark.) I have no idea what I’m doing for Thanksgiving, but I know that two weeks is a perfect amount of time to focus on a project.

In the next two weeks, I’m also finishing all my Christmas gifts, writing all my Christmas cards, and decluttering my Christmas decorations. This is all part of my stress-free, enjoy-the-holidays plan I have for December. Don’t feel you need to be as crazy as I am.

Whatever day it is, spend time on your goals. If you finish them in 2019, you get to make new goals for 2020, which is a lot more fun.