To help you manifest your dream job and get where you want to go in your career, you need to know how to create a vision board for career.
It was a quiet evening after a long tiring day at work - and an even more tiring two-hour commute. You found yourself sitting in your uncomfortable chair at home, barely having any energy left.
You sighed and sipped your warm tea thinking, "Where am I? What am I doing with my life?"
You had a dream. About your ideal career. Where did that dream go?
All these years, you just went with the flow and took any opportunity that life had thrown your way. You lived whatever life dictated to you.
Well, no more. You want to take over the wheels of your life.
You want to manifest your dream job and get where you want to go in your career. To help you do that you need to know how to create a vision board for career to help you envision your ideal career path.
What Is A Vision Board for Career?
Life has shown us over and over again that those with a clear vision of their future have a better chance of realizing their career dreams than those who haven't the slightest clue of what they want their professional life to be.
A vision helps you set goals for your life. If there is no end goal or destination in sight, then you won't know where to focus your efforts. Knowing your purpose can help you stay focused and avoid wasting time.
A vision board for career is a visual tool to help you envision what you want your career to look like in the future and your ideal work environment. It's a board where you write down your future career goals and add related images that represent those goals.
It also clarifies what you really want out of life. Having a vision board for a career will help you achieve better success in your job. You can use it to keep track of your goals and achievement and align your goals with your values.
Creating a career vision board is a great way to start thinking about your future career path. You'll find that creating a vision board is a lot easier if you focus on what you really want to achieve in your professional development rather than trying to figure out what job you should have.
Why Does A Career Vision Board Works?
Have you ever thought about buying a specific model of car, then suddenly saw that type of car everywhere? Did everybody suddenly have the urge to buy that same car around the same time?
Of course not. Those cars were already there all along. But you were not paying attention to them before you thought of buying that model.
That's the power of focus and attention. Your brain will white list everything that you put your focus and attention on and you'll start seeing them everywhere.
A career vision board - also known as a poster board - works more or less the same way. It serves as an effective way to visualize your personal values, stay focused on future goals, and help you reach your goals. By visualizing your goals, you'll feel more confident about taking action and making career decisions to achieve them. You'll be more prepared when job opportunities present themselves, or when you're face to face with career challenges.
Your career vision board serves as a roadmap for your dreams of the future. It's a great way to see where you want to go in life and where your career direction leads you. That's why it should be specific and measurable. It should also include your personal vision statement, and also short-term (one or two years ahead) and long-term goals (five years or longer).
How to Maximize the Impact of Your Career Vision Board?
You can create your vision board and still get nothing out of it. Here are several tips to maximize the impact of a career vision board.
First and foremost, focus on you and your core values.
Put the board where you'll see it often. Then, whenever you look at it, you'll remember your goals and remind yourself to work towards them. And don't just visualize them in your mind. Use photos or images, quotes, and symbols that inspire you and represent your career goals and dreams.
Keep the board simple. If it gets overcomplicated, it usually will never get done. You don't have to use fancy things. Anything you can find around the house will do. A digital board is fine, but most people prefer a more "real" dream board.
And don't forget to review your vision board regularly. Keep track of your progress and adjust as you move closer to reaching your dream career.
Build Your Career Vision Board
We've come to the fun part - actually working on your vision board. The process should be as easy as doing an elementary school handicraft project. It's easy to make and doesn't require any special skills.
Here are some tips for creating a vision board for career.
1. Set the vision
It's impossible to build something if you don't know what you want to build. So take a step back and start with the career resolutions and detailed vision of what you want your career to be. To create the ideal path to reach your career goals, you need a vision for the future. We've discussed the complete process in the article: How to Create Your Ideal Career Path (With Actionable Steps). Your vision should be about yourself feeling good about your career and life.
It's good to dream big, but be specific about what you want to achieve so you can plan the necessary steps. And more important than adding the collection of images, is focusing on the feeling that the vision board gives. And before you start creating your board, think about your personal values, personal vision statement, and the reasons why you want to achieve those goals.
As the board is a visual representation, it should be filled with visual assets. Choose the ones that excite you, reflect your true desires, represent your goals, and connect emotionally to what you want to achieve. To help you, think about your feelings during your career and the feelings that you want to feel in your future career.
2. Choose the medium
With your dream job on your mind, you can continue by deciding about the medium. There are two directions that you can take: going physical or digital.
A digital vision board seems to be the perfect choice with the advancement of today's technology. There are many drawing board apps available - both on personal computers and tablets. One quick Google search and you'll find tons of other alternatives. Some of these apps come with unlimited canvas sizes like Procreate. Web apps like Canva can also be a good choice as they are very user-friendly and even a newbie can come up with great looking vision board.
Most modern digital vision boards also come with an autosave feature and they sync across devices so you can access your board anytime anywhere. There are also tons of templates, brushes, and other visual assets to unlock your creativity. Another advantage of taking the digital route is the ability to add not only images but also videos and audio.
But as great as the digital alternative is, there's something about having a physical vision board that the digital counterpart can't beat. The act of cutting paper images and words from magazines, newspapers, or other printed materials and manually pinning them to the board will engrave the vision more vividly into your mind.
And while you can't bring the board everywhere you go, it's in your most important place. And unlike the app that you need to intentionally open, the physical board is always a glance away.
As for the medium, choose a type of board that requires less effort to add or remove the visuals - like the combination of a corkboard and colorful pins.
3. Start building
After setting the vision and choosing the medium, the following steps are only about finding - cutting - and pasting pictures and words in a collage. Find visuals that represent your dream job, words and phrases describing how you want to feel in your career, and put them all on the board. But make sure that there is enough space in your board before you start and plan the layout to arrange the materials.
Here are some items that you can include in your board:
• Photos of yourself doing activities related to your career aspirations
• Pictures of places where you'd like to live
• Words describing your ideal job, career vision statement, and core values.
• Quotes from inspirational or successful people
• Objects representing your future success
The most important point of turning something into a habit is to make it as effortless and as enjoyable as possible. It's a fun and creative process. If building your vision board is like doing a chore, there's a bigger chance that you won't do it.
You can also work with someone else to make the project more enjoyable. This someone should be a person who you can comfortably share your personal issues with. It could be your best friends, siblings, other family members, or your significant other.
4. Find the right spot
The most important thing about a career vision board is that it should always be visible and accessible all the time. Place it somewhere you spend most of your waking hours. You must be able to look at your vision board every day. That way you can always remind yourself what you want to accomplish. If you work with the physical board, you can place it in your room or your workspace.
But if you choose a digital board, make sure that it's compatible with all of your devices and can sync between them. That way, you can open your digital board everywhere and always have the up-to-date version.
Knowing what to do won't get you closer to your goals, but doing what you know, will. Visualization alone won't lead you to success. You have to make sure that you put your visions into action.
Every day, visualize what you want to achieve and do one action that will take you one step closer to your goals. Use your vision board to motivate you.
5. Work on the smaller goals
It's impossible to achieve all that you want in life in one swoop. It's like trying to reach the mountain peak in one step. Trying to do something overwhelming will just shut your brain down. You'll end up not doing it.
To realize your vision, you need to create a plan to accomplish your goals. Chunk your big-picture future goals into smaller and more manageable goals. Then go further down and chop these small goals into specific individual bite-size actions that you can finish in one go. This way, you'll only need to deal with doable tasks.
By checking off one item at a time, you'll get the feeling of accomplishment. And don't forget to give yourself a reward by celebrating your success no matter how small. The feeling of accomplishment and the reward are the factors that will keep you going.
Always reflect on what you have accomplished and use it to improve yourself. You can use Pomodoro techniques to help you focus while still having the necessary breaks.
How to Use Your Career Vision Board
There are several ways that you can use your career vision board to help you focus on achieving your professional goals.
You can use it to set either long-term or short-term goals - or both if the board allows. But in general, the fewer items on your board, the more focus and attention you can give to those items.
Another usage possibility of the vision board is to track your progress and career milestones. If you visualize achieving one of the goals in X years, you can go back to the board after that X years and see whether you've achieved it. You can also see how far you've gone on your career path.
The board also acts as visual reminders of your career mission statement - why you're working harder and how much is at stake. It's a powerful career motivator for the times when you feel burnout at work. It can also be your guidepost on your career journey to keep you on track and the source of inspiration along the way.
Creating Your Future
The great Abraham Lincoln once said, "The best way to predict the future is to create it". Creating your career vision board might be the first step in creating your future. You visualize what you like your future to be, and you put those visualizations into something tangible that you can see every day.
The thing about your brain is, it treats reality and "not (yet) reality" the same. That's why people scream watching scary scenes in horror movies or cry reading sad stories - even though you know really well that those things are not real. By ingraining your goals in your brain and (sub)consciously looking at them every day, you are putting yourself on the path to your destination and achieving your goals.
Imagine yourself several years from now looking at your board and realizing that you've checked off many of the goals that you set today. Wouldn't that be great?
The vision board for career helps people visualize what they want in a fun and creative way. So, start building yours today, put it where you can look at it every day, and let the magic begin.