She points out that setting your goals for the future is the easy part. It’s achieving them that is the challenge, so why would we not devote the same attention to the process as we do to the big visions?

“The purpose of setting goals is to win the game,” says Austen. “The purpose of building systems is to continue playing the game. True long-term thinking is goal-less thinking. It’s not about any single accomplishment. It is about the cycle of endless refinement and continuous improvement. Ultimately, it is your commitment to the process that will determine your progress.”

When it comes to how she makes her micro vision boards, Austen recommends Canva and Pinterest, the latter of which she’s set up as the background on her phone. She also suggests using no more than 10 images for each daily dos list, which keeps things nice and bite-sized.

Some examples of what she likes to have on hers include reminders to move her body, learn new things, listen to podcasts, laugh, have a good bedtime routine, buy good coffee and a reminder that she’s doing a job she loves.

Austen adds: “I might make changes quarterly, as this tends to align with when I review other trends in my professional life. However, if I feel that there is a new goal that I need to set for my daily routine or something I am struggling to stick to, I will make the change there and then. I’d advise against making too many changes too frequently. The purpose of this exercise is to support habit formation, given that you are what you repeatedly do.”

But she also has a warning: don’t let these vision boards have too much power over your happiness.

It’s easy for grand plans to give people a binary idea of their achievements: either you achieve your specific goal(s) or you’ve failed. But the journey can also see you getting somewhere you never thought possible, and just because it’s different, it doesn’t mean it’s necessarily worse.

Want to make your long-term goals a bit more attainable? Micro vision boards could be the answer