Vision Planning: A Blueprint to Craft Your Ideal Future

Introduction

This exercise helps you figure out your ideal future and who you want to become. This will help you gain clarity on your future goals.

Take some time, find a quiet spot, and really think about your answers. It's your life we are talking about, so it's worth taking the time and doing this properly.

You can either copy this article and answer the questions in a Word document or another platform of your choice, or duplicate my free notion template, which contains all the questions for you to answer through.

Vision Planning Exercise — Free Notion Template

Duplicate my free notion template onto your notion workspace so that you can go through this exercise and answer these questions for yourself.

Get Notion Template

Part 1: Your Why

What is your why?

What is the incentive for you to want to change from who you are now, to the person you want to become?

If you’ve read Simon Sinek’s book Start With Why, you’ll understand why this question is so important and should prompt you to take a moment, doesn’t have to be long, just to sit down and think through it.

If you haven’t read the book, I’d highly recommend it — it really changed my perspective on how I view my goals and helped me achieve my yearly goals.

Part 2: Your Ideal Self

1. What kind of person do you want to be in this life?
2. What is something you do for others that brings you a sense of satisfaction/fulfilment?
3. Is there someone you look up to? What is it about them that you are drawn to?
4. If time and money were not in the way, what would you love to do?
5. Who are you when no one else is looking? Is that person the person you want to be? If not, who can you talk to that is great at something you might want to improve in?
6. What are your beliefs about yourself?
7. What problem do I want to solve long term?

For each of the qualities you mentioned in question 1, think about where you are right now and what habit/system can you implement to get there. For example:

Part 3: Your Ideal Future

This section is about what you want your ideal future to look like.

Answer these questions, and really take some time to do this. Close your eyes and visualise what this looks like for you. Not only will this train your reticular activating system to look out for opportunities on getting there, but it also allows you to clearly define what success will look like for you, as it is different for everyone.

If you don't do this, how will you know when you have reached your goal? If you don’t have your goals clearly defined, you will just keep chasing and never be satisfied.

1. Where do you wake up? When?
2. What do you see when you wake up?
3. What do you see when you look outside?
4. How do you feel at that moment?
5. What do you eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner?
6. Are you alone or with someone?
7. Who are the people that are with you throughout the day?
8. What do you do that day for your health?
9. What do you do that day for your wealth?
10. What do you do that day for your relationships?
11. What do you do that day for work and for long?
12. Where do you work?
13. Who do you hang out with during and after work?
14. Are you travelling, if so – where, with who and what do you get up to?
15. How do you feel during every activity that you’ve been doing?
16. How do you feel before you fall asleep?

Part 4: Mental Contrasting

This section is about the concept of mental contrasting. What will your life look like if you do become the dream version of yourself, and what would it look like if you don’t? This mental contrasting can help you understand what you can achieve if you take action and what your life will look like with inaction.

Remember, the price of inaction is you will be no better off than where you are now, but you will just get older and have wasted numerous years of your life. Unless you are already happy with where you are now, inaction leads to a mediocre future.

What would my ideal self look like in these following areas? How would I know I have achieved it? What would I NOT want?

• Overall mood
• Gratitude & positive thoughts
• Thoughts & emotions
• Mindfulness
• Calm & serenity
• Family
• Friends
• Social circle & social life
• Partnership (loving & loved)
• Having fun
• Time for you & self-care
• Physical health
• Eating healthily, nutrition & supplementation
• Sleep
• Energy
• Creativity
• Finances – money, financial security & investments
• Work
• Hobbies
• Hair (head, grooming, body hair)
• Eye health
• Skin care & hygiene (face, body, nails, tattoos)
• Dental health
• Fashion, perfumes & accessories
• Learning, knowledge & curiosity (self-improvement, general, business, psychology, emotional intelligence)
• Confidence
• Kindness & charisma
• Self-esteem
• Lifestyle including luxury items (house, car)
• Being true to yourself
• Integrity (doing the right thing, even when no one is watching)
• Freedom
• Providing for & taking care of your family
• Travel & adventure
• Discipline

These are just the areas important to me in my life; add to them or take away as you see fit for areas that are important in your life. As you can see, there is a lot to think about to really get that clarity for what a good life looks like for you.

But the more clarity you can gain, the more you can take action to get there.

Now, for each of the above areas, answer:

1. How would I rate myself currently in this area?

For this, you could create a table such as this, which would make it easier:

Part 5: Staying on Track

To stay on track, do regular reviews:

Weekly reviews – the reason why this is important is some weeks are good, some weeks are bad, but a bad week isn’t enough to completely derail you from achieving your goals. Identifying your inactions early can help you correct its course before it becomes too late.

Monthly reviews — gives you a perspective on how you’re doing. It might be difficult to make changes day-to-day but seeing progress monthly keeps you motivated to keep going. Again very important. Allows you to add things you don’t necessarily need to do on a weekly basis — for example, taking progress pics.

Yearly reviews — your vision planning is supposed to be what you want your life to look like 5–10 years down the line. Making sure you set the compass in the right direction before you set sail is very important, and yearly reviews give you a bird's eye perspective of how things are going over a longer timeframe.

Action Points

1. Think about your own answers to those questions above. You can either use pen/paper, a Word document or download my free Notion template — whatever floats your boat.
2. Set a vision for yourself 5–10 years down the line. Create a vision board incorporating pictures of hat you want your life to look like, using Horizons app, PowerPoint or ChatGPT.
3. Create a yearly review to set goals for yourself for the year. Read my article for full detail on this process.