Making A Case For Ugly Vision Boards

Vision boards have a branding problem.

Somewhere along the way, they turned into hyper-aesthetic collages of dream lives that look great on Pinterest and do absolutely nothing in real life. Soft-focus money, perfect bodies, perfect jobs, perfect everything — and somehow we’re meant to stare at it hard enough for the universe to do the rest.

Spoiler: that has never worked.

This is where the ugly vision board comes in. And no, ugly doesn’t mean bad, it just means behind the scenes of your acheivements.

Add Instructions

The issue with most vision boards is that they only show the outcome. The big win. The end result. They skip the part where you actually have to do things.

You don’t need another reminder of what you want. You already know that. What you need is a visual reminder of what your life has to look like before you get it.

Advertisment

That’s the shift. An ugly vision board isn’t about motivation or aesthetics. It’s about practicality. It answers one question: what does a normal day look like if this goal is actually happening?

The Only Rule

Think of it as an 80/20 split.

Eighty per cent of the board is action. Alarms. Notes app screenshots. Half-done drafts. Gym workout pics. Budget spreadsheets. Rejection emails. The boring stuff you usually pretend doesn’t exist.

The remaining twenty per cent gets to be aesthetic. That’s where the dream lives. The job title. The lifestyle. The body. The moment you’re working towards.

An Action Board

An ugly vision board is just a vision board that’s romanticising the process more than the outcome. It doesn’t care about being inspirational. It cares about being accurate. It shows effort instead of pretending growth is effortless.

Want to make more money and save it? Skip the cash aesthetic. Add budget screenshots, savings goals and reminders to stop impulse spending. It’s not cute, but it works. And that’s kind of the point.

Realistic Manifestation

Manifestation isn’t about asking the universe for things and waiting. It works best when it’s specific, grounded and backed by effort.

You don’t just want the outcome, you want the habits that make the outcome inevitable. An ugly vision board makes that visible. It takes the pressure off being perfect and replaces it with something much more useful: consistency.

So Yes, Make It Ugly

If your vision board isn’t aesthetic enough for Instagram, you’re probably doing it right. Make it messy. Make it practical. Make it full of reminders that growth is repetitive, unglamorous and very worth it. Ugly effort is what actually gets you there.

Read More:

With Glue, Paper And Nostalgia, The Art of Scrapbooking Is Getting A 2023 Upgrade

Here's What We Think These 11 Characters' New Year’s Resolutions Should Be

New Year Resolutions Are Pointless. Here's Why I Am Not Making Any