We love a good vision board as much as the next person, and while we’re no strangers to dreaming big, sometimes the collage of all those grand plans on said board can start to look a little bit… far away.

After all, it’s well and good setting intentions and using the pictures and statements on the board as a source of inspiration, but how can we go about making all of these goals a reality?

For Emily Austen, founder of Emerge and host of the Busi-Ness podcast, the answer is simple: micro vision boards.

These smaller goals, which she calls her ‘daily dos’, are intended to take her on a more intentional path towards the dreams set out on her macro vision board.

Whether it’s steps that need to be taken, like applying for a certain job, habits that should be shaped, like going to yoga every week, or things that you should make time to enjoy for the sake of your mental health, these are the things digestible daily dos are made of.

“Inspired by reading James Clear’s Atomic Habits,” Austen says, “I became interested in the idea of systems and processes, rather than long-term visions. Much of the literature that speaks to this focuses so much on goal setting, but often I found myself feeling as though I didn’t have a plan for how to get there.

“The daily dos are my version of a micro vision board. A shifter and shaper of what you actually want your day-to-day life to look, feel, smell, taste and be like. It’s great to have huge goals, but not at any cost. Sprinting into burnout due to the pressure of your looming goals isn’t the way to living smarter. Instead, I try and think about what my vision day to day looks like. Long-term goals are achievable as a result of what you do daily. I shifted my perspective to focus on that, rather than just the goal.”

She points out that setting your goals for the future is the easy part. It’s achieving them that is the challenge, so why would we not devote the same attention to the process as we do to the big visions?

“The purpose of setting goals is to win the game,” says Austen. “The purpose of building systems is to continue playing the game. True long-term thinking is goal-less thinking. It’s not about any single accomplishment. It is about the cycle of endless refinement and continuous improvement. Ultimately, it is your commitment to the process that will determine your progress.”

When it comes to how she makes her micro vision boards, Austen recommends Canva and Pinterest, the latter of which she’s set up as the background on her phone. She also suggests using no more than 10 images for each daily dos list, which keeps things nice and bite-sized.

Some examples of what she likes to have on hers include reminders to move her body, learn new things, listen to podcasts, laugh, have a good bedtime routine, buy good coffee and a reminder that she’s doing a job she loves.

Austen adds: “I might make changes quarterly, as this tends to align with when I review other trends in my professional life. However, if I feel that there is a new goal that I need to set for my daily routine or something I am struggling to stick to, I will make the change there and then. I’d advise against making too many changes too frequently. The purpose of this exercise is to support habit formation, given that you are what you repeatedly do.”

But she also has a warning: don’t let these vision boards have too much power over your happiness.

It’s easy for grand plans to give people a binary idea of their achievements: either you achieve your specific goal(s) or you’ve failed. But the journey can also see you getting somewhere you never thought possible, and just because it’s different, it doesn’t mean it’s necessarily worse. 

Images: Getty