Hello, 2026: Vision Board & Goal Setting

As 2025 came to a close, I nearly chose to skip any new year planning. Truthfully, I wasn’t really excited about the new year. Starting 2026 felt a little bit “don’t make any sudden movements!”. However, on January 1st, I knew I needed to do my usual monthly/weekly planning, and I decided I should go ahead and give myself some direction and do a little yearly planning after all.

What started as “I better make my 2026 Design Your Year Dashboard” quickly diverted to “I guess I should first figure out my core desired feelings” which, after some reflection there, blossomed into “I’m going to make a vision board” and ultimately amounted to figuring out some goals for the year. And viola! my 2026 Dashboard is up and running and bringing a smile to my face (more on that dashboard below).

In the end, I’m really really happy I opted to carve out some time to sort out what I’m craving most and making a gameplan for the year. I’m so happy in fact that I thought I should share some of the methods that I’ve found most useful when it comes to visioning & goal setting.

The Desire Map by Danielle LaPorte

Full disclosure: I find the entirety of the book a little bit gimmicky (though it’s probably a personal preference thing). While the whole thing wasn’t necessarily my cup of tea (it’s pretty big text though so it’s not much to weed through at least), I found plenty of gems in the book that have been greatly helpful in sorting out the jumble of thoughts in my head. And the “workbook” part of the book is pretty great and what I actually use year to year. She calls it “creating goals with soul” and I do think that’s a pretty accurate explanation of what it’s all about. I like to start here first because once I can sort out my core desired feelings I can start pinpointing what I really want to do with my time.

Jules Acree

Vision board

There’s not much for me to say here when Jules Acree lays it all out on youtube with a cozy little tutorial on creating your own vision board with Pinterest and Canva:

design your year (notion pack)

I use Jules’ Design Your Year Notion Pack to keep track of my goals through the year. I love that it helps me stay intentional and gives me plenty of flexibility to shift as the year unfolds. Because things never go as expected, do they? Her Notion Pack can be found here: Jules Acree Shop

I started using her notion pack with no previous experience with Notion. There was a short learning curve, and the pack includes plenty of videos that help navigate it all. She also emails out a fresh template at the end of each year, with nourishing little prompts to help end the year in way that sets you up for a nice fresh new year.

You can see how it works here right from her:

So there you have it! All my favorite tools for goal setting and planning. Perhaps something will resonate with you too!

Wishing you delightful 2026 ✨