How to Create a Vision Board with an Action Plan

People use the end of the year as a time to reflect on past achievements and failures, or the highs and the lows. The same goes for businesses. They run end-of-year reviews to compare them with previous years.

The purpose of these reflections and end-of-year reviews serve as a guideline to set new goals to achieve in the new year to come. What worked? What didn’t? Why? What can we do to do better?

One popular concept in the goal-making process is vision boards, also known as dream boards. Some create them with a theme in mind, such as career, travel, money, health, family, and relationships, to name a few.

But…why create a vision board when you can create a smart and visual action board instead?

The Law of Attraction and Vision Boards

It started with the secret. People can attract what people think, a premise known as the law of attraction. It appeared in the 2006 published book “The Secret” by Rhonda Byrne. I admit I haven’t read the book, nor do I have plans to read it due to its negative online reviews.

The law of attraction suggests positive thoughts lead to positive results. The opposite happens as well, negative thoughts can lead to negative outcomes. Vision boards use the law of attraction, but as it is named, the idea is to have a visual vision.

Vision boards involve the creation of, you know it, a board with a collage of images used to represent the goals or dreams a person wishes to achieve. It can even be fun to create. I created a digital vision board back in 2020 because, why not? And you know what, it worked. I will tell you why soon.

Note that I am not against vision boards and I do believe the mind is powerful. However, I don’t think the mind by itself manifests any of our goals or dreams. As such, vision boards only serve as reminders of what we want. There must be an action plan behind it.

When I created my 2020 digital vision board, I did so with a smart action plan in hand.

SMART Goals

We need to be smart about the goals we want to achieve. It is not enough to have a goal in mind, a smart plan needs to be implemented to achieve any and all goals.

The SMART goals subject has been studied or analyzed multiple times and many are familiar with it, so I will only provide the basics. SMART stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. We need to ask ourselves certain questions about each premise, which will allow us to break down the goals into an action plan.

Specific: Keep it simple when trying to establish a specific goal. Ask: what do I want to accomplish? Why is it important?

Measurable: Number skills are useful for this one as it helps keep track of the progress. Ask: how much? how many?

Achievable: Must be attainable. Ask: How can I accomplish the goal? Is it realistic?

Relevant: Be reasonable, realistic, results-based. Ask: Is it worthwhile?

Time-Bound: Set a date or time, or both. Ask: When?

*The information above comes from the following resource: SMART Goals — How to Make Your Goals Achievable. It provides more details for those who are curious.

Create a vision board with an action plan

Remember when I mentioned above I created a vision board back in 2020? It worked for me.

I never made a vision board before 2020. In part, it was due to laziness. I didn’t want to spend the money buying magazines to later spend hours upon hours searching for the right image for my vision board. It was time-consuming, required supplies, and then clean-up time. I respect people who actually put in the time and effort.

Due to this, I went ahead and created a digital vision board instead. I knew what I wanted to accomplish, so I searched for images online that served as my vision to achieve the goals. I used the free version of Canva to create it.

I had the vision board down. It didn’t look great. However, it did allow me to break down all the goals for the year into an action plan.

Along with the vision board, I created an Excel spreadsheet that included each of the steps I needed to take. It had the main goal, the reason why I wanted to accomplish it, along with start dates and target dates.

The spreadsheet allowed me to break down the full year into quarter goals, then weekly, and finally daily goals. I also set up realistic expectations because I can only control what I do, feel, and how to react to situations. There are many other variables I’m not in control of, so setting realistic expectations help.

That’s how my 2020 vision became a reality.

Takeaway and Final Thoughts

Some find vision boards a bit controversial as there is hardly any scientific evidence, studies, or research done on the subject.

Don't let this stop you from visualizing your dreams and goals, and take action into your own hands.

It is not enough to create a vision board and have daily positive thoughts with the hope that the universe will manifest it. Maybe it will work. Maybe it won't. I’m not saying, don’t create a vision board. I'm just saying, create one that includes a detailed action plan too.

I think happiness can be achieved if an actionable plan is created to go along with a vision board. At the end of the year, we all want to look back and realize we achieved what we set out to do.

*Original story first appeared on Medium. This version has been slighly updated for this platform.