What's the point of a vision board?

A group member came back to a session having done the ideal day exercise, and described doing it in a very generic way. When I asked what had stopped her, the question was ready.

What's the point of creating this picture when it's not connected to my current situation?

A group member, on the ideal day she had written

She also described her experience during the exercise.

There was this thought going around in my head, that it feels so far away.

Her, on why she hadn't gone back to it

A vision board and an ideal day are two different tools, and I use them side by side. The vision board is visual, pictures of the experiences you want to create, somewhere you'll see them every day. The ideal day is written, a day lived inside those experiences and described from the inside: how you breathe, who's around you, how it feels. The board gives you something to look at, and writing the day out puts you inside it.

I've seen a lot of both end the same way, made once and never opened again, and in my experience they stall for the same reason.

Why doesn't my vision board do anything?

Because it feels so far away. A picture of a life sitting years out from the one you have now gives you less opportunity for experiences you can begin to install right away, so it goes in a folder and you go back to what's in front of you. The distance is what stops it, and the distance is the thing you get to change.

Two blocks come up on this and they look like opposites. Some people know their ideal day exactly, and it is so grandiose and so remote that they will not engage with it at all. Others freeze before they write anything down, because the picture has to be impressive, or finished, or right.

Both of those end up as a vision that gets made once and put away. A group member listed her vision board among the things she had stopped using.

Like having a vision board. Now I have a different method.

Another group member, on what she had abandoned

A third had the same experience with volume.

because it's so much, I can't even grasp one or another. I think it's too much for a brain to really hold on to, versus a vision board or a goal list. I would have it for a year or two and that would be like, oh, why am I not having it yet.

A third, on the goal list she had been keeping

A year or two of looking at the same page and asking why it hasn't arrived yet. Many of the people I work with are delivering all day for other people, on dates other people set, and hitting them, so they know how to follow through on a date. The experiences on their vision board haven't been given one yet.

Do vision boards work?

They work when you keep opening them. A vision you go back to weekly, add to, and change as you go does something, but a lot of them end up as a file you never open again. So print it, keep it by the bed, revisit it, keep adding to it.

Now I can see it more like a tool that I can use, instead of just creating this ideal day and then leaving it somewhere in my archive.

Her, after we had reworked hers

That came after we changed two things about her ideal day, how far out it sat, and what was in it.

Why do my dreams feel so far away?

Because of the horizon you put them on, and you chose that horizon. A lot of this gets done at the scale of a whole life, which is where it stops being something anybody can act on. So shrink it. I put this to her and it changed the exercise completely.

Why not create an ideal day, a version that could be possible next month, from where it is that you're at today?

Daniel Lawson

That would be much easier and more concrete, and I would immediately have more details and more clarity.

Her, on next month's version of her day

More detail, straight away, because next month is close enough to picture properly. The far-off version of the day was vague because it was far off, and vague is not something you can put in a calendar, is it.

What are the experiences you create this month?

Start with how you want to experience the day. The objects in it come second, and the car and the house and the view are not what decides anything.

what determines the experience is who it is that we're being. That's why it's called your ideal self.

Daniel Lawson

So the prompts that work are about you inside the day rather than the contents of it. A group member wrote hers as a run of questions.

How would I breathe, how would I sit, how would my posture be, how would I walk, how would I move around, how would I talk.

A group member, writing her ideal self

And where somebody is stuck looking at the picture, the question to ask is how does it make you feel. She took that one to the window in front of her and found the feeling was already there.

Then layer it. Describe what is there, then what you see and hear, then what it brings up in you, then what it means to you, then why it is important to you. Same picture, a prompt at a time.

When does each experience start?

Go through the day you wrote and mark every line with when it happens. What you already have, what you could start tomorrow, and what needs a week, a month or six months. Each builds on the line before it, so what starts tomorrow and this week is what makes the month, and the month is what puts the six months within reach. That turns a description into a sequence, and it is the step that gets skipped.

Now you've got yourself a game plan.

Daniel Lawson

Then write why each line matters to you, next to the line.

Until we know why something is important, you won't take care of it.

Daniel Lawson

Which is why the reasons go on the page as well as the lines. Without an emotional connection to it you have a list, and a list is easy to put down.

The day changes as you live it

Mine changed, and I'm glad it did.

When I first did this, years ago, a plate of tropical fruit prepared for me was in my ideal day. Years later I moved to Bali, where that is an easy thing to have, and I had it, and I liked it. I don't eat fruit in the morning now. It's eggs, every day, and my brother has heard more than enough about them.

there's so much of my ideal day I already live because I get to eat the eggs every day. And I'm unapologetic for me.

Daniel Lawson

So a line coming off the page is the exercise working. You went and got it, you found out what it was like, and you put something you want more in its place. The picture grows as you go.

Common questions

What is the purpose of creating a vision board?

To give you a visual of the experiences you want to create, somewhere you'll see it every day. The pictures keep those experiences in front of you. Writing them out as an ideal day puts you inside them, and sorting that day line by line gives each experience a time, so the first of them is something you can work towards this month.

What is the success rate of a vision board?

I don't have a number for you on that, and the ones that get quoted are not measuring anything. What I can tell you from the people I work with is which ones do something: the ones that get opened weekly, that sit a month out rather than a decade out, and that have been sorted into what is already here and what starts tomorrow.

My vision board has been up for a year and nothing has happened.

Then the horizon is what to change first, before the content. Write an ideal day from what's on the board, the version that could be possible next month from where you are today, and you will get more detail out of yourself than the board has given you all year.

Should my ideal day be realistic?

It should be possible next month, which is a different test from realistic, because realistic tends to mean small. A day that is possible next month can still have what you want in it, at the size it comes in now.

Why is the big picture easier to write than the specifics?

Because the big dream requires nothing of you immediately. A group member said it is easier to create the overall vision than to set specific goals, and she is right, because a specific goal has a date and a result attached and the overall one doesn't. The sort is what brings the vision down into the specifics, and that is also why it gets avoided.

What if I don't know what I want at all?

Then the day is the wrong place to start, and the feeling comes first. How do you want to feel, rather than what do you want, and the answers come back in a different order. It is also easier to describe a feeling you have had before than a life you haven't had yet.

If this is you

If you have spent years delivering what other people needed by the date they needed it, you already know how to work to a timeline. What comes next is pointing that at the day you wrote for yourself. Next month's version of it, the lines sorted, the reasons written next to them, and the first of them in the calendar before you close the page.

The day will change as you go, and that is it working.

What keeps you opening the page is other people. Somebody to ask you next month how the day went, and a few others around you going after what they're passionate about and telling you about it.

The Reconnected Man and The Reconnected Woman are the group where we have these conversations together.