Imagine waking up every morning feeling excited about your career. You have a destination planned, and every goal you achieve brings you closer to your ambition. Sounds fantastic, right? That’s the power of a career vision board.
A vision board visually represents your dream job, helping you stay focused and motivated. Whether you’re looking for a promotion, a career change or more work-life balance, it helps to clarify your aspirations and turn them into reality.
If you want to create a vision board that aligns with your goals, you’ve come to the right place. Here, you’ll get tips on choosing a template, finding inspiration and making a board that reflects your dream career.
What Does a Professional Vision Board Look Like?
A vision board is a collage of photos, quotes and sometimes even textures that remind you of your goals as you work toward them. It should inspire you every time you look at it.
You can create one board for your entire life, but it’s better to be specific. Make separate vision boards for different areas, such as your finances or relationships.
Use your career vision board to map out overarching career aspirations instead of cluttering it with lots of tiny stepping stones. Think of it as your five-year plan put to paper.
A career vision board will help you accomplish valuable objectives by always keeping them at the forefront of your mind. Every time you look at it, you can feel excited to see all your milestones defined and planned.
Vision Board Templates
Be realistic when mapping your vision board. Focus on how much time it will take to accomplish every objective and what strategies you will use to get there. Here are some tips you can use to start.
- Write down your goals: Be as specific as possible. For instance, if you plan to earn a promotion to VP within the next two years, think of everything that needs to happen to reach that point. Remember to make your goals SMART to ensure you can achieve them easily. Fleshing them out will give you an unambiguous direction before starting your vision board.
- Analyze your qualifications: How much work will it take to make your dreams come true? Clear your path by assessing what skills and knowledge you might still need to acquire to realize your ambitions.
- Get creative: One of the most impactful elements of a vision board is how visual it is. If you love bright colors, use them as a backdrop for logos of companies that inspire you, photos of people you look up to and anything else that might help along the way. These visuals are critical for motivation.
- Throw in some affirmations: Daily affirmations are a tried-and-true way to bring more positivity into your life. Repeating short mantras like “I can do anything I put my mind to” will rewire your brain and change your perspective.
- Simplicity wins: Include all your goals and aspirations, but don’t let the vision board get so cluttered and messy that it becomes a source of stress. Use minimalist principles to make it neat and aesthetically pleasing.
- Get personal: Your vision board should also reflect your personality. Add touches that will make it undoubtedly yours. Claim it — this represents your future, after all!
Choosing the Right Format
No two vision boards are identical, so you must find a format that fits you. Some people love hanging an oversized bulletin board on the wall, while others prefer a smaller one they can display on their desks.
You can also try a digital vision board to minimize clutter. The concept and philosophy are the same — the only difference is that the result will live on your phone, laptop or tablet.
A digital vision board follows the same template as a physical one, eliminating the tedium of manually cutting and pasting images. Search for images that match your goals and add them to a digital collage creator. After you’ve done this, you can turn it into a wallpaper to ensure you see it every time you open your device.
How to Use Your Vision Board
A vision board can be an invaluable tool for self-directed career advancement. As a constant reminder of your goals, it should be something you revisit and interact with regularly. One of the best ways to use it is to keep it in a place where you will see it daily. Many people put their vision boards on their desks, in the bathroom where they get ready for work in the morning or on their device’s home screen.
You are only one person and cannot expect yourself to achieve everything on your vision board immediately after putting it up. Instead, estimate how long it will take to reach various milestones. When looking at your vision board, prioritize smaller, more attainable achievements over audacious goals. Focus on going one step at a time so you don’t get overwhelmed.
Lastly, have fun with your vision board. Once you have checked off an accomplishment, treat yourself to something and add star-shaped stickers to it, or cover that goal in positive affirmations that encourage you to keep going.
Though the visual element of your vision board is essential, writing things down on paper can help you manifest your goals more quickly. Keep a notebook near your vision board with every component of your SMART goals written down in detail so you can refer back to it often.
Tips for Success
Following this advice when creating your vision board can lead you to the successful career you’ve always wanted.
- Be realistic but inspired: When creating your vision board, be level-headed about how much time, energy and effort you can put into each goal. Imagine you’ve just come aboard at a company and already want to climb the ladder — that’s admirable. However, assuming you will become a partner within your second month is unrealistic.
- Be open to change: While your immediate objectives might feel all-consuming, be flexible enough to go with the flow. It’s OK if your ambitions change and take you in a different direction.
- Make revisions: Similarly, you should periodically revisit and change your vision board. You will notice that some things no longer matter to you or are not achievable in the time you’ve set out. Revisions will reflect your updated capacity to achieve your goals.
- Trust your process: Believing in yourself can be challenging, but you can’t achieve your goals without having faith that things will work out for you if you take inspired action.
Bring Your Dream Career to Life
Your career vision board is a powerful tool for staying focused, inspired and committed. Creating a visual representation of your ideal career trajectory gives you the motivation and direction to turn your dreams into a reality.
Remember, your vision board is not indelible. As you grow and evolve, so should your goals. Routinely revisit your plans, update them as needed and take ownership of making your ambitions come true.
