Yearly Vision Board: Look Back, Pick a Motto, Start Fresh

A yearly vision board starts with last year's board. Before you look for a single new picture, you sit down with the old one and ask what came true, what you're done with and what still matters.

I've been making vision boards since I was a teenager, and I've been building VISIYA, a vision board app for iPhone and iPad, since 2022. Every year around my birthday I take stock of my board, without beating myself up, and only then do I start the new one.

That's the method on this page: four marks for every old wish, eight year-in-review questions, a motto for the year and a few rules for the next board. It's all on a free printable worksheet, too.

What is a yearly vision board?

It's a board for one year. At the end of the year you review it properly, once, and start a fresh one.

How it compares with other boards:

	Life vision board	Yearly vision board	Seasonal list
How long it runs	Open-ended	12 months	2 to 3 months
What's on it	Big dreams	3 to 6 areas, up to 3 wishes each	About 6 wishes
When you review it	Rarely	Once a year	When the season ends

Mine gets the same name every year with a new number: "Marinas Vision Board – 34", then "– 35". One board for each year of my life.

Why bother with a new board every year? Because a board with an end date gets you moving, and the review shows you what you really wanted. A board with no end tends to turn into wall decor.

Other kinds of boards are covered in types of vision boards.

How do you review last year's vision board?

Go through your old board one wish at a time and give each wish one of four marks. Then count how many came true.

Mark	What it means	What happens to it
✓ Came true	It happened the way you hoped	Stays on the old board, as proof
≈ Came true differently	It happened, in a different form	Counts as a yes; write down what it turned into
✗ Let go	You don't want it anymore	Cross it off, no guilt
→ Carry over	You still want it	Goes on the new board, reworded

One of my boards said "new friendships." I didn't make many new friends that year, but the friendships I already had grew closer. I count that as "came true differently."

Don't expect everything to come true. For me it's about half. On my "– 34" board it was 12 out of 22. That's my own count, not a statistic, and knowing it takes a lot of pressure off. For what research does and doesn't say, see do vision boards work?

In VISIYA, you open a picture and tap "Mark as fulfilled." The board card then shows your count, like "12/22 fulfilled." The other three marks go on the worksheet.

Then work through these eight questions. Write your answers down instead of just thinking them through.

1. What came true that I'd almost forgotten I wished for?
2. What came true, just not the way I pictured it?
3. What did I stop wanting, and why?
4. What surprised me?
5. What gave me energy?
6. What drained me?
7. What did I do that I never planned to?
8. How do I want to feel more often next year?

Question 8 matters most. It's about a feeling, and that feeling leads you straight to your motto.

Get the free year-review worksheet

Two printable US Letter pages, no sign-up and no email required: Year in Review & Next Board worksheet (PDF).

• Page 1, look back: a table for up to 20 wishes from your old board with the four marks, a "__ of __ came true" line and the eight questions.
• Page 2, next board: room for your motto and up to six areas, each with three wishes, a first step and an "If…, then…" line. At the bottom: one small wish for this week and the date of your next review.

Give yourself about an hour. Make it a small ritual: phone on Do Not Disturb, a mug of hot cocoa or tea, music you love.

How do you pick a word or motto for the year?

Take your answer to question 8 and boil it down to a word, a color, a song or a short sentence. That's your motto.

One of my years was simply "Pink." For my "– 35" board I chose "Radikale Sichtbarkeit," radical visibility. It sits right under the board's name.

A good motto makes sense to you even on a bad day. It also helps you decide things: does this fit my word for the year, or not?

If nothing comes to mind, go one level deeper, to your values. What matters to you, whatever your goals turn out to be? To get from values to concrete goals, see these vision board goal examples.

What goes on next year's board?

Three to six areas of your life, with three wishes at most in each. Every wish gets a first step and one "If…, then…" sentence.

Rules that help:

• Carry over a third, tops. Any more and the new board is a copy of the old one, with no room for anything new.
• Two boards is enough. If a wish sat untouched on two boards in a row, cross it off or rewrite it from scratch. It doesn't get a third ride.
• Write what you'll do. "Take a walk every morning" works better than "sit on the couch less."
• Only your own wishes. Leave out your mom's, your partner's and Instagram's.

There's research behind the third rule. In a study of New Year's resolutions, Martin Oscarsson, Per Carlbring, Gerhard Andersson and Alexander Rozental (PLOS ONE, 2020) followed 1,066 people in Sweden for a year. People whose resolution was something to start were more likely to report success than people whose resolution was something to quit: 58.9% vs. 47.1%.

What it doesn't show: people signed up themselves, judged their own success, and many dropped out along the way. And these were resolutions, not vision boards.

Why the "If…, then…" sentence? Peter Gollwitzer and Paschal Sheeran pooled 94 tests of these if-then plans in a 2006 meta-analysis. Deciding ahead of time when and how you'll act made people noticeably more likely to reach their goals. Again, no vision boards were involved, and the size of the effect depended on the kind of goal.

Here's how it looks on a board:

Wish	First step	If…, then…
Two weeks at the beach this summer	Put in the PTO request	If there's money left at the end of the month, then it goes into the travel fund.
Get back to yoga	Book a trial class at the studio down the street	If it's Tuesday and I'm home from work, then I roll out my mat before I do anything else.

For ideas on what to put in each area, browse these vision board ideas. For building the board itself, on paper or on your phone, follow the guide on how to make a vision board.

Should you start on New Year's or your birthday?

Any date that feels like a fresh start works. What matters is that you review the old board before you begin.

I'd rather start on my birthday. On New Year's it feels like everyone makes resolutions at the same time; your birthday belongs to you alone. I've even skipped a New Year's board on purpose.

There's a reason a date like that helps. Behavioral scientists Hengchen Dai, Katherine Milkman and Jason Riis called it the fresh start effect (2014). After "landmarks" such as the start of a week or month, a holiday or a birthday, more people searched Google for "diet," went to the gym and committed to goals.

What it doesn't show: the researchers observed behavior; it wasn't an experiment. It shows that people are more likely to start, not that they keep going. Vision boards weren't part of it. I haven't found a study that tests a yearly vision board itself, so the board numbers on this page are my own count.

New Year's still has its pull. Everyone around you is thinking about the year ahead, and the days off between Christmas and New Year's give you time. If you want something slower, the 13 wishes ritual spreads the review and your wishes over the Twelve Holy Nights.

Making a board for 2027? Dates, new-moon windows and the 2027 template are all in the 2027 vision board guide.

Want to do it with friends? Here's how a vision board party comes together in one evening.

Paper, printable template or app?

Paper is all you need for the review. For the new board, pick whatever you'll actually look at.

	Paper	Printable template	VISIYA app
What you need	Poster board, scissors, glue, pictures	A printer, pens, pictures	An iPhone or iPad
Keeping last year's board	Take a photo, file the original in a folder	File it in a binder	With VISIYA Plus, every old board stays in the app
Cost	Just supplies	Free	One board free, for good

Free printable templates, which also work as boards in the app:

• This Year I Will, with five areas for New Year's resolutions
• Wheel of Balance Board, with eight life areas, if you want to see where you stand first

The template that fits this ritual best is Best Year. Its description in the app reads: "It's advised to create this board at the beginning of each year or shortly after your birthday." As a board in VISIYA it's part of VISIYA Plus; the printable PDF is free.

In VISIYA, one board is free for good: your own, or one of the six free templates. For the new year, you mark what came true, swap out the pictures and rename the board.

To start a new board every year and keep the old ones, you need VISIYA Plus, a one-time purchase with no subscription. VISIYA is available for iPhone and iPad. To see how boards work in the app, read how to make a vision board on your phone.

How do you keep a yearly vision board going all year?

Do something for one wish in the first week, then look at your board often enough that you don't forget it.

• Make one small wish come true this week. Buy the book, book the class, send the text. Why that first step matters so much is in how to activate a vision board.
• Look at it briefly and often. How often and where is covered in our big guide to next year's board. I give my own board a proper look at least once a month and adjust it as the year goes on.
• Add a seasonal list. A big yearly board is easy to forget. A short list with an end date helps: one summer I had six wishes on six tiles, and by the end of August all six were checked off. In VISIYA, the Summer Bucket List template is part of VISIYA Plus.

The widget is part of VISIYA Plus and cycles through all your pictures. Without Plus, it shows just the first picture of your board. The lock-screen wallpaper is part of VISIYA Plus, too.

Your vision board won't make anything happen on its own. It shows you what you're willing to work for, and at the end of the year it shows you what you did.

For tonight, all you need is the worksheet, a pen and an hour with your old board.