The Skeptic’s Guide to Vision Boards: Make One That Actually Drives Action

Vision boards work… do they? 😅 In this episode, Jess (the believer) and Claude (the skeptic) make vision boards for 2026 and unpack what vision boards really are: not magic, not toxic positivity, but a clarity tool that helps you focus your decisions and take real action.

We share the 3 questions that guide everything, how to avoid turning your board into a fantasy board, and a simple way to keep your goals visible all year.

What You’ll Learn / Key Takeaways:

• The 3 questions to ask before you cut a single picture
• Why “vision board” is really a clarity board
• How to avoid a “fantasy board” (and keep goals tangible)
• What it means when you don’t hit a goal… but you’re still on track
• Why consistency is the real secret ingredient
• Physical vs digital vision boards: pick what works for your brain
• The easiest way to actually use your board (phone wallpaper hack)

Mentioned in This Episode:

• Recording from Podfest in Orlando (yes, we’re literally on the floor 😄)
• Canva vs magazines + scissors + glue
• Building community + growing the podcast ecosystem

Action Challenge (for listeners):
Answer these three questions today:

1. How do I want work to feel in 2026?
2. What do I want less of?
3. What am I willing to do differently?

Then share ONE word, phrase, or image that represents your 2026 direction.

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Work Besties! Theme Song Written by Ralph Lentini @therallyband

Transcript

Opening And Big Three Questions

Claude F 0:00

Before you cut anything, or ask yourself three questions. How do I want work to feel in 2026? What do I want less of? And what am I willing to do differently?

Believer Vs Skeptic Set The Stage

Jess K 0:12

Vision boards work. Do they? Or is it just glue with confidence? This week on Work Best Easy U Podcast, we're making vision boards for 2026 with one believer and one skeptic. No manifesting pressure, no toxic positivity, just real talk about clarity, intention, and how we actually want work to feel in 2026.

Claude F 0:35

Hi, I'm Clude. And I'm Jess. We are corporate employees by day, entrepreneurs by night, and work besties for life.

Jess K 0:44

Join us as we explore how work besties lift each other up, laugh through the chaos, and thrive together in every industry. Work besties! Hi besties. Welcome back to Work Besties Who Podcasts, the show where we talk about work, life, and the relationships that keep us sane at our jobs. We are. We are currently sitting on the floor podcasting to you from the podcast on fronts.

Claude F 1:10

And today we are tackling a very polarizing topic, at least for us.

Jess K 1:16

Vision boards.

Claude F 1:18

Yes, vision boards, which Jess loves. And Claude, let's just say not so much a big fan of. Not that I'm not a fan. I don't believe in it. Isn't that the same? No.

Jess K 1:35

All right, explain yourself.

Claude F 1:37

Well, I don't think that putting something on the board is going to happen because you put it in the board. What?

Jess K 1:46

Well then why did you do it with me?

Claude F 1:49

Because you like it. That's what friendship is.

Jess K 1:53

Alright, so whether or not you love vision boards or not, this episode will help you understand from my perspective why they help and what it feels like to put something at down on paper that makes you think about the future.

Claude F 2:09

Because today we're not just talking about vision boards for 2026. We actually made them.

Jess K 2:17

We actually just made it for us anyway, on camera live. We will share.

Claude F 2:22

You will see.

What Vision Boards Are And Aren’t

Jess K 2:23

It was fun. All right, so let's start here. Why vision boards for 2026? If you guys remember, we've actually done them for the last few years.

Claude F 2:32

Because apparently we need to think already in January about all 2026.

Jess K 2:38

So that far ahead. Yeah, exactly. So many of us spend the end of December or even beginning of January thinking about what we want for the next year, the goals. Maybe we think about the things that we didn't hit and therefore want to think about accomplishing in the next year. And a vision board is really about intention, not the pressure you have to do it, but the intention of what you want to get done. Okay.

Claude F 3:01

And I'll add, even if I'm a skeptic, I do think we really pose to ask, what do I actually want my work and life to feel like?

Jess K 3:13

Right. That's the point of vision boards. It's not just about uh hitting a goal, but to visualize the direction of where you want to go. So ideally it would be great to hit them all, but you're really just thinking about your why behind to get there and how you can start thinking about it.

Claude F 3:32

Okay. So that I can understand, where it's like kind of your to-do list for the whole year. Well, not even the whole year.

Jess K 3:39

Inspirational. Right. It's inspirational. And I don't even think it's necessarily for the whole year in my mind. It's like a clarity cleanser. What would you like your life to look, feel, and accomplish? And how can you start getting there in this next year? Doesn't mean you have to do it all. Doesn't mean that you're gonna get to do it all. It's how do you start bringing the intention and the energy in your workforce and your life to focus on those things? So it shifts not just to how and the where, but the decisions behind what you decide to do throughout the year.

Claude F 4:13

Okay, so for me, it was kind of in my head when I heard Vision Board was more about if I glue it on a piece of paper, it is going to happen. Still have to do the work. You would like to happen. So it's kind of the board doesn't manifest the thing. It's just you remind yourself throughout the year what your goals are.

Jess K 4:36

I love that. You are the person who manifests it, you're the manifestation of it. The board helps you visualize what you're bringing to life, so it creates the act of bringing it into your mindset and how you can start to think differently.

Claude F 4:55

Alright. That's that's more logical than in my woo-woo ways.

Jess K 5:02

Um wait. Thank you. I appreciate that so much. So as we think about what we're accomplishing, what is um your concerns here?

Claude F 5:12

My concern is that Vision Board could become a fantasy board. Like something that is not going to be attainable. Like, for example, I want to buy myself a private jet. I want to run for president. Both of those could be attainable, but yeah. No, it's not.

Jess K 5:31

They are.

Claude F 5:32

How am I going to have a project jet?

Jess K 5:36

If I make enough money, you can get it. Win Lord. Yeah. I think what you want to think about is if that is really the goal that you're trying to go after, which I don't think it is. So that's why in your mind it's just nine attainable. But let's say, for example, let's talk about one of the ones that we put on our board two years ago, or this past year in 2025, that we didn't necessarily hit, but we've now still up the ante and put on our board this year. Our community. How do we continue to grow our community? We had a very lofty goal of what we wanted to get to, a certain number of followers, and we didn't quite get there, but we were close. There we go. Right. And therefore, even though we didn't hit it for 2025, we were on the path, and we definitely will hit it in 2026. We still upped the ante and made it higher. It's not like we just kept it at that. Because in our mind, the community is around our people and what we want to foster and support. And while we still didn't hit it last year, it's not a negative on us. We are on the trajectory and close enough because we are thinking about it, we're constantly engaging with our community, and our other work besties are helping to engage with the community that it's going to help bring us up.

Claude F 6:53

Yeah. So more or less, you still have to get some goals that are tangible.

Jess K 6:58

Right. Yeah. Right, you're right, right. All right. So I think it's more about how do we think about reflection of them versus just you have to hit it. It's like a blueprint.

Claude F 7:12

A blueprint for your year. Yeah, that's I that's a good one.

Jess K 7:15

Like we should tag like some MC threatens.

Claude F 7:18

Blueprint for the year.

Tangible Targets And Community Growth

Jess K 7:19

One of the goals that we had for this year that we've already published, which was to start engaging with other like-minded individuals and understand how they have established themselves in the podcasting industry. This is something we had put technically on our board for last year. Yeah. We put again this year. Um, and we've met so many really cool individuals. We've been able to engage with those that are guests, their podcasters, their editors, yes, all walks of life. And I think to me, this is a great example. We we definitely went to conferences last year, but we didn't quite hit what we were trying to do, which was to build our network of podcasters as broadly as we wanted last year. So we can we continue to do it this year. That's true. I'm gonna go a little bit into depth about what we're thinking about for this year. Yeah. We don't have to talk about all of it, but maybe a few elements. Um shall we choose? All right, we're gonna continue talking about it. We're gonna pause for a second and go. And then festive. If you're doing this with us, here's here's what you do need. So we've just created this. We just created this before, and we will share with you guys the video of us making it, which is very comical. It took probably longer than we anticipated, but what you do need is a physical that I just did last year. If you guys do recall, we used Canva to create ours. This year we decided to go a little bit more old school and use magazines, pictures from Pinterest, pictures that we had from other things. We even added some stickers and glue. So you'll obviously need some type of pictures, whether you decide to do it physically or on some type of digital format. You'll need scissors, glues, screenshots, whatever works, and about 15 minutes is maybe we were a little more. But you need a little bit of time. We were gaggling the whole time. So we'll show it and then Claude can walk through some of the questions that we thought about while we were creating ours. All right. This is our vision for this definitely feels like you're in like sixth grade, about to do your very first presentation. Four, but that's okay.

Claude F 9:31

So here, of course, we have to stay on brand with our logo, which I do love. Our logo, I really love, and our color theme.

Jess K 9:42

I I think what would help other people is masking or answering some of the questions that we came up with so that they can start thinking about how to create their own vision board. That was my picture, everyone.

Claude F 9:58

Thank you for the contribution. Before you cut anything or you choose your pictures or go on the internet or whatever, ask yourself three questions. How do I want work to feel in 2026? What do I want less of? And what am I willing to do differently? And that will be the blueprint of what your 2026 your year will be, and what will be on your vision board.

Jess K 10:29

In addition to what we want less of, it's what we want more of for us. Like what do we want to share?

Claude F 10:33

Yes. And also how do we want to be different too? Yeah. And for the people that listen to us on audio, I would really suggest for you to watch on YouTube.

Jess K 10:44

Just to see, just to see how amazing our vision board really is. Um, so yeah, I would say that in addition to those questions, it it is more about what we want to do different.

Claude F 10:59

Right. What do we want to add to the year that we want to do now? Now it's what our third year, right? Podcasting. What are we ready now for the next steps?

Jess K 11:09

It is a little more on the feelings of what we want and where we want to go, not necessarily all the steps that you're going to take.

Claude F 11:17

Exactly.

Jess K 11:18

Think about what are those things you want, where you think you want to go, and bring that into your forefront as you're coming up with the ideas.

Networking, Conferences, And Next Steps

Claude F 11:28

Exactly. So, for example, for us, we looked at what do we have right now in the podcast? We have social media, we have the podcasts in all the platform. What are we missing? Well, we are missing a couple of other social media like Pinterest, but also what we are missing a big one is a website. That is something to think like that. What is the next steps that you want to do for the next year?

Jess K 11:53

At the same time, we also reflected on what's working, or from our perspective, what we wanted to double down on, which was the consistency. We we really felt the big change between season one and season two for us was the consistency and being more authentic and planning ahead for how and what we wanted to establish. So you'll s really start to notice that. And we obviously are are still learning how we're we always learn. Everybody will and we learned we've done a lot the last couple of days at this podcast.

Claude F 12:31

You don't learn, you know, you you stay stagnant.

Jess K 12:33

So the consistency from our perspective isn't necessarily like we have to do the same thing, but for us, it's the consistency of establishing the routine of the podcast, the routine of engaging with our guests and continuing to evolve that. The consistency of every week having a podcast and thinking about the ways that we show up is super important, and for us was our key takeaway. And so, Claude, do you, after going through this exercise now for the third year, have anything that you feel like does work from it?

Claude F 13:07

So it's so funny because I feel like we have the same thing, right? I don't believe it, then I believe it. And then as the year goes out, it's kind of I forget the real goal of the vision board. I like to say again, it's not like a fantasy. I'm good, I want to win the logo. It's more about what do you want this year to be and how do you get there, or at least to have not how to get there, but to remind you as the year goes, progresses, progresses. Okay, I did that. I need to go to the next step now. I need to do, I'm in Pandereist, I need to go to the website now. You know, it kind of helps I like to do lists, yeah, because I'm otherwise I'm all over the place. But that actually helps me to stay grounded. So I do like that.

How To Make Yours: Tools And Time

Jess K 13:54

Right. And I think to your point, the reason why we shifted, because the last two years, I created the vision board with your help. Not that I did it solely on my own, but not much. But I created them in Canva, and you were like, okay, that's just not how I visualize things. So we decided to do different brains, right? Different brains everywhere. Um, we decided to do them on a physical board. So although this year was maybe not the best showing of it, we'll continue to get better and better every year.

Claude F 14:23

It doesn't matter.

Jess K 14:24

It's it still is something that works for us because you and I was part of it. Had different well, yes, you're part of it, but you also have different ways of thinking about things. Your way of manifesting is to visualize, is to write down lessons. You have to physically do it to have it mentally engaged. Yes. Which is it is a manifestation, whether we want it or not. But regardless of that, it it is a new way of doing it than what we've done in the past. Recommendation on this one is there is no one size fits all in creating a vision board. If you are a person that really loves and feels more confident and excited about the physical cutting of pictures and pasting them, and looking and searching for the picture, then do that. You know, if you're somebody who likes to just write words on a page like a journal, that also works. If you're somebody like me who loved to do Canva and then I can visualize it and see it on your digital screens, all of them work. It's whatever you feel most confident in. It is just a way to provide the blueprint and the clarity to consistently think and see it because visualizing it and seeing it helps bring it back to life.

Claude F 15:36

Exactly. So where are we going to put it?

Jess K 15:38

I don't know. Some place that you can consistently look at it, I guess.

Claude F 15:43

Maybe we should put it on our phone screen.

Jess K 15:46

You can do that.

Claude F 15:48

Okay.

Jess K 15:49

We got it. So let's snap a picture and put it on our phone screen. Yeah. So that that in a nutshell is the key takeaway from today. Vision boards don't necessarily replace the actions, they support it. So you still have to come up with the actions on your own, but it helps.

Claude F 16:05

If you're a believer like Jess or a skeptic like me, at the end of the day, don't think vision board like vision. It's the goal is really about clarity. What is the blueprint for the year to come and to stay in your mind and to remind you as it goes and also visualize and you don't forget.

Jess K 16:26

It is not just the visualization, but it's the intention. It gets you on that next step to think about the actions that will get you to move the needle for some of those goals. Now this is on you. We want you all to start thinking about your vision boards for the year, and we'd love for you to share anything from them. Whether it's a picture, whether it's the visual words, or even a phrase of something that you're focused on. We'd love to hear from you all. We'd love to be a part of the journey with you guys and to understand what our work bestie community is super excited about for 2026. With that, we want to say thank you and see you next week. Zeke Besties, keep supporting each other. Bye! Remember, whether you're swapping snacks in the break room, rescuing each other from endless meetings, or just sending that perfectly timed meme. Having a work bestie is like having your own personal hype squad.

Claude F 17:26

So keep lifting each other up, laughing through the chaos, and of course, thriving. Until next time, stay positive, stay productive, and don't forget to keep supporting each other.

The Guiding Questions For Clarity

Jess K 17:39

Work besties!