ViBo guide · Vision boards
How to host a vision board party
A vision board party is a few friends, an evening, and everyone making a board for the year ahead. Most of them happen in the last week of December or the first two weeks of January. This page is a plan you can follow: what to sort out beforehand, how to run the evening, and what to do when someone stares at a blank page for twenty minutes.
One thing to know before you plan around ViBo: there is no shared editing. Each person makes their own board, on their own phone or laptop, and you look at them together at the end.
Before the day
Invite four to eight people
Fewer than four and the show-and-tell at the end is over in ten minutes. More than eight and it takes an hour, and the last people to go get rushed. If more want to come, split into two tables.
Pick the date
Between Christmas and the second week of January works best, while people are still thinking about the year. A weekend afternoon is easier than a weeknight, because making a board takes longer than everyone expects.
Decide paper or screens
Paper needs magazines, scissors, glue, card and a big table. Screens need each person to bring a charged laptop or phone, and Wi-Fi. Both work. The section below compares them.
Send one question in advance
Something like: "What are two things you want to be true by next December?" People who arrive with an answer start straight away. People who arrive without one spend the first hour choosing pictures they like and the board ends up a mood board.
A running order for the evening
About two and a half hours. Move the times around; keep the order.
| When | What happens | |
|---|---|---|
| Arrive and eat | First 30 minutes | Food first. Nobody makes a good board hungry, and it gives late arrivals time to turn up. |
| Look back at the year | 20 minutes | Each person says one thing that went well this year and one thing they did not get to. This is where most of the board's content comes from. |
| Make the boards | About an hour | Quiet work. Put some music on. Walk round and help anyone who has stopped. |
| Show and tell | 30 minutes | Each person shows their board and picks one thing on it to explain. One thing, so the eighth person gets the same time as the first. |
| Put a date on it | 10 minutes | Everyone writes down when they will look at their board again. March is a good first date. |
Paper, screens, or a video call
Paper
The classic version, and the best one for the evening itself: it is messy, social and you go home with something on the wall. The cost is the cutting. Collecting pictures from magazines can take most of the hour, so ask people to bring a few printed photos of their own.
Laptops and phones
Faster, and nobody runs out of pictures. In ViBo each person opens vibomaker.com, starts a board with no account, and adds photos, notes, links and goals. The board can be printed on one page or saved as a PDF before anyone leaves, so there is still something to take home.
A video call
Good for friends in different cities. Everyone joins the call and makes their own board. For the show-and-tell, people either share their screen or, if they have signed in, send a link to their board in the chat, which opens as a read-only view.
Prompts for anyone who gets stuck
Someone always does. These questions work better than "just put what you want".
What did you want this time last year?
Did it happen? If not, does it still belong on the board?
What would make next December feel like a good year?
Answer with things you could see or count: a trip taken, a course finished, a savings figure, a habit kept up.
What do you want more of, and what do you want less of?
Less is allowed on a board. "Fewer late nights at work" is a real goal.
Pick one area of life
Health, work, money, home, people, learning, fun. If the whole year is too big, make the board about one of them.
- If even one area feels big, pick one month instead.
What usually goes wrong
All the time goes on finding pictures
The board gets made in the last ten minutes and nobody has thought about what is on it. Set the hour aside for deciding, and let the pictures be rough.
Every board looks the same
A beach, a nice kitchen, someone running. When people make boards together they copy each other's ideas. The look-back at the start helps, because everyone's year was different.
It turns into a competition
Big promises sound better out loud. Keep the show-and-tell to one thing per person, and nobody has to explain the whole board.
Nobody looks at the board again
This is the most common one. The evening was fun, and the board goes in a drawer or a folder. That is why the last ten minutes are for writing down a date.
After the party
If the boards are on paper, take a photo of each one before people leave, so there is a copy when the original gets lost behind the fridge. If they are in ViBo, people who sign in keep their board in their account; a guest board stays in that browser on that device. On the date you picked, open it, move what has changed, and take off anything that no longer fits. You could make that date a second, smaller get-together, which gives everyone a reason to actually do it.
Plan the evening, then plan the second look.
The party is the easy part, and most people enjoy it. What decides whether a board does anything is whether it gets opened again in March. If you are hosting, put that date in the invitation too.