What the 2026 vision board misses

Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog (c. 1817), Caspar David Friedrich

article by Viviana Adame

edited by Priscilla Priya

In the weeks leading up to the new year, my social media algorithm is determined to push me toward making a vision board.

My feed is filled with videos of friends gathering to cut out magazines over drinks, alongside posts offering step-by-step guides on “how to create the perfect vision board.” Vision boarding has become our generation’s version of new year’s resolutions.

Collage materials and color charts,

Vyacheslav Argenberg

The popularity of vision boarding invites us to consider how ambition is shaped today, and whether what we strive for emerges

from self-knowledge or from

a culture that demands constant achievement.

Unlike the traditional new year’s resolution, which tends to focus on a single goal, the vision board multiplies aspirations across every aspect of life, from career to love to appearance. What once functioned as an introspective creative medium has been re-shaped by the visual saturation of media. Resolution has morphed into a mechanism of internalised pressure to achieve, shaped by external influence rather than personal intention. As a result, personal objectives become increasingly dictated by the overflow of “lifestyle” content, normalising anxiety around curating and optimising daily life.

Tableau synoptique des traits physionomiques: pour servir à l’étude du “portrait parlé” (ca. 1909). Alphonse Bertillon

Dracula, 1931

This dynamic aligns with South Korean philosopher Byung Chul Han’s book The Burnout Society (2010) where he critiques a culture of achievement sustained by internalised pressure. Han’s argument is centered on the transition from a disciplinary society to an achievement society where the lines of freedom and exploitation are no longer distinguishable. For Han, this trend fits within a broader picture of systemic self-exploitation.

From this perspective, the immediate association of the new year with goal setting is not coincidental, but symptomatic of a toxic culture. The critique is not of ambition itself, but of the conditions under which ambition is formed, asking if what we strive for is truly our own or shaped by the demand to always achieve, be it internal or external.

Mose (vita contemplativa), 1535 (detail)

Photo by Sailko

Vision boarding romanticises attainment while overlooking process. It prioritises the image of success over the monotony of daily improvement. We have developed a broader habit of approaching life in purely utilitarian terms, where activities are valued only for what they produce. As a result, aspiration is shaped by an addiction to productivity of the self and not by knowledge of the self.

For Byung-Chul Han, this mindset marks the loss of the vita contemplativa, the capacity for pause, and engagement without a pre-defined goal. When every action must lead to an outcome, there is no space to simply think or allow meaning to emerge gradually. Vision boards thus exemplify how aspiration, detached from contemplation, becomes performance-oriented and reinforces achievement without self-understanding.

Fencer (1906), Georges Demenÿ

Yet, fulfilling our goals and practicing vita contemplativa are not mutually exclusive. Contemplation cultivates the clarity needed to resist internal pressure and external noise, breaking the lonely achievement cycle. It restores intention to action rather than abolishing ambition.

Le chapeau épinglé (drawing), Pierre-Auguste Renoir

The weight of contemplation became tangible to me when I visited an exhibition dedicated to Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919), one of the central figures of Impressionism. I was privileged to encounter Renoir’s artistic process from sketches to finished paintings. I found myself being equally captivated by the various stages of his work. This body of work presented not just the finished work, but the beauty in the mundane processes that eventually led to it.

Renoir’s process becomes an aspiration not toward the finished image,

but toward learning to value the time and attention creation requires.

There, I encountered a value which contemporary culture often dismisses: slowness. Slowness enables mindfulness and allows attention to linger. Each study carries weight, not as a means to an end, but as an act complete in itself . Renoir’s work reminds us that value does not only reside in masterpieces, but in the patience to remain present in the process that precedes them.

This emphasis on process echoes French existentialist Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986). In The Ethics of Ambiguity (1948), she argues that value does not reside in achieving an end, but in the responsibility one assumes throughout the process. Beauvoir warns against ways of living that fixate only on the goal as meaning becomes continually deferred. Renoir’s studies offer a visual counterpoint to this logic, privileging attention over outcome. Vision boards by contrast, freeze aspiration into an image overlooking the process where meaning actually takes place.

Léon Pallière (1787–1820) in His Room at the Villa Medici,

Rome (1817), Jean Alaux

Vision boards are not inherently bad, but they often lack the substance needed to motivate real change.

Long Distance Runners, Ancient Greece (amphora),

Scan by RickyBennison

Rather than yielding to the pressure of an achievement driven society, this moment invites reflection on who the previous year has shaped us to be. Understanding how we have grown, changed, and responded allows us to move into the new year with intention rather than projection.

Instead of assembling futures from social media images, we might adopt the ethos of the artistic life and vita contemplativa, grounding aspiration in presence, process and attention.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)