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War board mini workshop
Vol. 1, The journey
Using a war board to map (and tackle) your dream life or project
This is for you if ...

  • You struggle with goal-setting and execution, but have big dreams and plans you'd love to make reality someday.
  • You've had trouble sticking with other productivity systems.
  • You've bought all the planners, apps, books, trackers, and office supplies, and they've all been relegated to the Land of Lost Productivity. You see them occasionally, and they give you little pangs of guilt, subtle reminders of all the things you've failed to do or stick to.
  • Every system you've tried is either too abstract, leaves you stranded when it comes to execution, or offers rigid, soul-crushing spreadsheets that completely ignore the human components of emotion, fear, fatigue, and chaos.
  • You don't want to have to "learn" a new system.
  • You want to be able to jump into your actual work as quickly as possible.
  • You're a visual thinker.
  • You're organizationally impaired.
  • You'd rather read a map than follow directions.
What's included here

  • Mini workshop video
  • Milanote template of "The journey" planning sequence
  • Companion guide (including PDF downloadable version)
  • Prompt cheat sheet / quick reference
  • Implementation notes
What this is & why you need it

  • The War Board Method is a way to set and achieve your goals using a visual planning and execution system.
  • If you struggle using other productivity systems, especially if you're a visual learner, the War Board Method might be right for you.
  • My preferred platform for creating a war board is Milanote (no affiliation at the time of this writing), but you can use any whiteboarding app or even a wall in your home or office.
  • In this mini workshop and companion guide, we'll cover just one of the many templates and planning sequences I use for kickstarting a war board, "The journey."
  • This is part of a larger series, but is a good place to start your own war board to help you tackle your dream life or project.
What you'll need to get started

  • A big idea or bucket list item you'd like to achieve as soon as possible
  • A whiteboarding app (your choice, mine is Milanote) or an empty wall in your home or office
  • This mini workshop and companion guide, which will walk you through setting things up

And if you're using a wall instead of a whiteboarding app, you'll also need:

  • Tape (I use double-sided, but you can use one-sided or washi tape, too)
  • Index cards or Post-It notes
  • Marker
Introduction:
What is the War Board Method?
The War Board Method is a way to set and achieve your goals using a visual planning and execution system.
I started "war boarding" at least a decade ago (although I didn't call it that at the time) as a way of organizing all the big ideas I had in my head.

Whether I was trying to launch a business, start a podcast or website, write a book or course, or plan a new product or service line, war boarding was the only way I could visualize and execute the idea. (Otherwise, it was just a big, overwhelming, jumbled mess in my head.)

I'd clear off a wall in my office (say, 5-feet high by 8- or 10-feet wide), grab a stack of index cards and a marker, and sit on the floor in front of it, writing and sorting, writing and sorting.

At the end of a few hours, I'd have a visual game plan I could hold in my mind and execute more easily.

Fast forward a few years, I then moved to digital war boarding using Milanote.

I launched a mentoring program for young entrepreneurs and creatives, and we needed a way to collaborate on war boards in order to help them launch their own dream projects or businesses.

And I've been using digital war boarding ever since.
Why is the War Board Method?

The idea for war boarding, to me, seemed pretty simple. Over the years, however, I started recognizing that its simplicity was exactly what made it so valuable.

For me, existing productivity systems were always overly complex and eventually abandoned.

I felt like I needed a PhD to use them. At the very least, that's how much time I'd have to study them in order to understand them well enough to use them.

And if I dared get behind on maintenance steps involved with those systems, the whole thing quickly fell apart, becoming too hairy to manage, so I'd have to start over (usually with a new system).

With war boarding, all I had to do was start a new board, keep the components I wanted to keep or that were still relevant, and save the rest in case I ever needed those pieces again.

When my war boards got unruly or bloated, it was easy enough to start from scratch and simply take a photo—in the case of physical war boards on a wall—or archive the older one when using digital.

What I liked about the War Board Method and war boards was that they didn't feel like a productivity system at all. I didn't have to "learn" anything about it in order to use it. Diving into the work was the system.

Over time, I did develop templates for it, but they were purely to duplicate things I tended to repeat, whether for myself or the kids in the mentoring program. They were not at all required to war board.

But—they are good for getting the gears turning, especially if you're new to war boarding, so that's what we'll be covering here.
What we'll be covering here

In this mini workshop and its companion guide, we'll be covering one of several templates and planning sequences I use for kickstarting a war board.

This one's called "The journey," and it's a place to start with your own war board or if you've never used the War Board Method for planning and getting things done.

Here's a quick peek of "The journey" template and planning sequence.

The accompanying video (~30 min) walks you through it step by step, and this article serves as a copy-and-paste companion guide so that you don’t have to pause the video to take notes or scrub through timelines to find a specific prompt.
The philosophy behind the War Board Method

Where other productivity systems fall short

Most people don’t quit because they lack ambition. They quit because the tools they’re given are either too vague (“Just set goals!”) or too complex (“Here’s a 400-step productivity system to help you get things done!”).

On top of that, most planning systems ignore the emotional and psychological realities of change.

The point of the War Board Method is simple: most people aren't short on ideas, they're short on a structure that helps them stay with those ideas long enough to act on them and bring them to life.

The psychological framework:
Ancient wisdom meets neuroscience plus strategic coaching
The war within

The phrase "war board" comes from one of my favorite quotes in the Introduction of the Eknath Easwaran translation of The Bhagavad Gita:

"The subject is the war within, the struggle for self-mastery that every human being must wage if he or she is to emerge from life victorious."

The work is not just about productivity; it is about the war within, the struggle to move from default living to deliberate living.

The phrase is not from productivity culture or from hustle mythology, but from one of the oldest texts in existence, describing the only battle that actually matters: the one happening inside your head.

The war board becomes your battle plan, as well as the "war room" for strategizing and executing on that plan.

Whether your goal is building a business, changing careers, writing a book, improving your health, or redesigning your life entirely, you'll quickly discover that the greatest obstacles are rarely logistical.

Most are internal.

Fear.

Confusion.

Overwhelm.

Self-doubt.

Distraction.

Avoidance.

The war board exists to help you confront those obstacles directly rather than letting them quietly dictate your choices.
The story you want to live

"What story would you choose to live by? The answer offers a clue to your soul, your deepest self." — Catherine Ann Jones, The Way of Story

Most productivity systems focus heavily on tasks. The War Board Method focuses on context.
Instead of asking:

"What should I do today?"

It asks:

"What story am I trying to live?"

Then it helps you work backward from that answer.

The system combines ...

  • Long-term vision,
  • Medium-term planning,
  • Quarterly execution,
  • Daily action,
  • Reflection,
  • Obstacle management, and
  • Fear management
... into a single visual environment.

Everything lives together. Everything remains visible.

And because the board evolves with you, it can be adapted as your goals, circumstances, and understanding change.
The 25-year horizon
(Dan Sullivan framing)

When people sit down to plan their lives, they usually over-index on the next 12 months. This creates immense performance pressure, causing people to panic, overcommit, and ultimately abandon their goals by February.

Following strategic coach Dan Sullivan’s insights, the War Board Method uses a 25-year timeline at the highest tier of our board.

Why?

Because a quarter-century horizon completely tricks your brain.

It removes immediate time anxiety, creates space for massive creative thinking, and helps you realize that you have plenty of time to build your dream life—provided you start directing your focus today.

Basically, you can think bigger without having to solve your life in a single quarter.
The monkey mind
(Buddhism + neuroscience)

In the mini workshop, we'll talk more extensively about the "monkey mind," the internal chatter that tells you you're stuck, behind, or failing.

This isn't just an abstract concept. It's deeply tied to neuroscience.

When your brain is resting and not focused on an external task, a network of interacting brain regions called the Default Mode Network (DMN) fires up.

The DMN is responsible for self-reflection, rumination, and worrying about the future or past. It's the biological home of your inner critic, your brain’s wandering, catastrophizing, self-doubting mode.

Externalizing thoughts—on cards, boards, and visuals—interrupts the loop, reduces overwhelm, and increases follow-through, which is exactly why the system works, even when motivation fails.

The war board acts as an external Task Positive Network (TPN).

By visually externalizing your worries, tasks, and fears onto the board, you actively down-regulate the DMN, quiet the inner critic, and force your brain into a calm, focused, execution-ready state.
The philosophy in summary

The War Board Method holds two truths at once: you need enough philosophical grounding to stay oriented, as well as enough practical structure to know what to do next.

It serves as a visual planning and execution system designed to get what's in your head out into the world as quickly and clearly as possible.

More importantly, it gives your goals, plans, obstacles, fears, next actions, and progress a permanent home outside your head.

Instead of relying on memory, motivation, or willpower, you create a visible command center for the life or project you're trying to build.
What a war board looks like

There are as many variations on a war board as there are people, which is another reason I've come to rely on the method.

No two people are alike.

No two projects are alike.

No two working styles are alike.

You can mix and match the various war boarding templates to meet your needs and preferences, as well as the specifics of a given project.

Here's a couple of screenshots from the workshop example to give you an idea.
In this specific mini workshop, we'll one of several templates and planning sequences to kickstart a war board. There will be more to come, but "The journey" is a good place to start, so let's get to that.
The journey:
The first template & planning sequence
of the War Board Method

The journey (an overview)

"The journey" template and planning sequence is where I chose to start the introduction to the War Board Method, since it’s simple enough to start today, but deep enough to grow with you.

The mini workshop video will walk you through it step by step, but here's a quick overview.

Note that I've include a prompt quick reference cheat sheet at the end of this walkthrough. No need to take notes. This is just a walkthrough.
"The journey" is one of several kickstarter templates within the War Board Method. It's a planning sequence—not your working war board, but the foundation you build before you set one up.

Think of it this way: the journey is where you plan. The war board overview is where you get an "at-a-glance" look at your direction and execute from day to day.

A quick tour of the journey sequence

Quotes (the anchors)

Two quotes live at the top of "The journey" template as permanent fixtures.

The first, from Catherine Ann Jones:

"What story would you choose to live by?"

Not the story you're living by default. The one you'd choose, if you had it your way. Start there.
The second is from the Introduction in the Easwaran translation to The Bhagavad Gita—a reminder that the obstacles you'll face are mostly internal. The war board is your command central for that battle.

"The subject is the war within, the struggle for self-mastery that every human being must wage if he or she is to emerge from life victorious."
Monkey mind

The monkey mind sub-board is the place you go within your war board anytime you're feeling stalled.
It runs you through a series of prompts:

"What's the nature of your stuckness?" — Rob Bell

  • I'm feeling stuck with/around ...
  • What makes me feel that way?
  • Is it true/reasonable?
  • What can I do about it?
  • What is/are my next step/s?
You'll write the answers out and drag any next steps into your main war board overview in order to execute them and begin moving again.

Within the workshop video, we'll walk through an example case study to show the war board filled out and in practice, but here's an idea of what it might look like.
Inspiration / Vision board

The "Inspiration / Vision board" within the sequence is a working visual board (like a living Pinterest board) that captures images and inspiration for the life or project you're building.
Make it realistic, specific, and enticing. You'll return to this regularly when motivation dips.

Don't try to make it perfect to start, as you can add to it over time.
Remember when

The "Remember when" sub-board is a running log of your journey as it happens.
It might include:

  • Journal snippets,
  • Before and after photos,
  • Problems you run into,
  • Wishlists, and
  • Milestone moments.

These feel like obstacles or small wins in the moment, but become war stories later.

You'll forget these things. Write them down. A few sentences is enough, but they remind you of your ability to work through problems, while also stopping to note the things you don't want to forget.

Here's an idea from the example case study within the workshop video.
Long-term vision

Think big here. Dan Sullivan of Strategic Coach suggests asking: "What if you gave yourself 25 years to transform your life?"

That kind of time horizon removes the pressure of immediate execution and opens up what's actually possible.

Write down 3–5 things you want to see happen in that time. Pull in a photo or two from your inspiration board if it helps.
Again, an idea from the example case study within the workshop video.
3- to 5-year vision (optional)

Some people find this level of planning useful. Others (including me) find that life changes too much over three to five years for the brain to assign much relevance to it.

If you find it helpful, add 3–5 milestones working backward from your long-term vision.

If it doesn't work for you, skip it entirely. You'll work directly from your long-term vision into the 12- to 18-month view.
An idea from the example case study.
12- to 18-month vision

This is where longer-term thinking connects to the near term. From your long-term vision (or 3–5-year plan, if you're using it), identify the big-rock movements — the major milestones — you can make over the coming year to 18 months.

Break each milestone down into 3–5 steps. These become your quarterly targets.
An idea from the example case study.
90- to 100-day plan

This is the engine of the whole system.
You're only working with the immediate next quarter, not what comes after. That focus is intentional. One quarter at a time means you're evaluating and adjusting more frequently than if you only revisit your plan once a year. That's what makes this more likely to actually work.

Break your current quarter's milestone down into the major steps needed to reach it, then break each step into specific to-dos for the near term. Strategies you think will work, actions that move the needle, next best steps.

You might also want to set up a big rock daily work block, a dedicated chunk of time (for example, an hour first thing in the morning) where you sit with your war board, review your intentions, and move things forward. Protect that time and use it to deliberately move your vision forward.

Here's how it might look, using the case study from the workshop.
One practical tip: for recurring actions, create a note or to-do list, label it "template," and duplicate it at your desired intervals. This prevents recreating the same list from scratch every week or month.
Here there be dragons
Adjacent to the monkey mind, this is where you deal with your biggest fears about this dream or project head-on.

Most of what stops us is imagined (not always, but usually), and even when the fears are real, they're rarely as catastrophic as they feel unexplored. Writing them down and examining them in the open tends to deflate them and make them seem more manageable.

Here's the example from the case study.
The prompt questions (and, remember, I've included a prompt quick reference cheat sheet at the end):

  • What's my biggest fear about this?
  • What's the worst that could happen if this fails or blows up?
  • Can I live with that?
  • Can I reverse it, or put things back?

Keep coming back to this section (and the monkey mind) whenever you hit a wall. Don't hide from the fears, but don't let them make your decisions for you, either.
The journey prompt sheet
(All the questions in one place)

The digital architecture for your war board (aka the navigation)

If you're using Milanote for your war board, here's how the navigation might look. You'll create each of these sub-boards in order to navigate your war board easily and intuitively.
The launch page is the Home page. It's the default start page within Milanote.
I usually have three sub-boards here:

  • My dashboard,
  • An inbox, and
  • A war board archive.

The video covers all these elements in greater detail, but here's a brief summary.

  • Home: Your launchpad. Contains your Dashboard, Inbox, War board, and War board archive. This page serves as a clean entry point into your digital life.

  • Dashboard: Your functional, high-velocity workstation containing links you use daily (or at least regularly), as well as swipe files and graphics you use often within your war board.

  • The inbox: Your quick-capture space, especially when using Milanote on mobile.

  • The war board (not shown in the screenshot above): Your command center and core visual engine for your war board. Within it sits "The journey" template / planning sequence, which you'll revisit whenever you want to make changes, find inspiration, or plan out the next quarter.

  • The war board archive: The place where older versions of your war board live. (When you finish a version, duplicate it, date it, and archive it so you can keep a record of how the board evolves over time. This can be helpful, too, if you need to revisit a portion of an earlier plan or duplicate something from an older war board.)

Note the "Unsorted" tab in the upper, right-hand corner of the screenshot above. It'll come into play in the next step of creating your war board overview.
The war board overview,
Your central command

Now that you understand the overall architecture and navigation, let's talk about what you do once you have "The journey" starter template completed.

Note that a more detailed explanation exists within the companion video. This is just quick recap.

You've walked through "The journey" sequence in full, and now it's time to create your war board overview page.

You'll want to copy all of the most relevant pieces and information to your war board's overview page, which serves as your command central, as well as a bird's-eye view of your overall plan.

This is where you start your work each day, as it provides the most important details at a glance, things like what you're doing, why you're doing them, and next steps for executing your plan.

As with everything within your war board, your overview setup is personal. No two people will want the same information visible from day to day, but let's walk through a few recommendations on things you might like to include.
  1. Begin by visiting each of the various sub-boards within your journey sequence. If there's anything you'd like to include in your main war board overview, copy those items, section by section.
  2. Paste everything into the "Unsorted" area of your main war board overview. Don't try to organize while you're gathering. Collect first. You'll sort later. (Screenshot below.)
  3. Pull from the 12- to 18-month vision. Copy only the immediately relevant milestone, the one for the current quarter.
  4. Pull everything from the 90- to 100-day plan: The milestone, the quarter's steps, the week's to-dos, and the daily work block commitment.
  5. Keep most everything else in the sub-boards. The full journey is one click away. No need to surface it all on the overview, which would just create clutter and make things less clear and actionable.

Know, too, that your war board (including its overview) is a living document. It will change regularly, even every day. That's the point. It's alive and moving. The second it becomes stagnant, it's time to rebuild, as you've likely gotten disconnected from your vision and intentions, or else they've become irrelevant because you've outgrown or surpassed them.
And that's it for the base setup. Now you have your daily starting point for aligning with and executing your plan.

Next, let's walk through some practical implementation steps.
Practical implementation notes

Here are a few practical implementation notes and workarounds, both for war boarding in general and for Milanote, should you decide to use it to build your digital war board.

Build the war board habit.

Your war board is an intentional environment, and the only way it'll work is if you develop the habit of using it each and every day.

There are a variety of ways to build the habit.

  • Set an alarm to remind you to check your war board at the start of each work day (if you know you'll be at your desk by 9 AM, set an alarm to "Start with the war board" for 8:55).
  • Pin your war board in your web browser so that it's always the first thing you see (direct war board overview link that bypasses the home page of Milanote).
  • Make your war board link a prominent shortcut link (ideally, first place) on the home page of your web browser.
  • Treat your war board as a sacred part of your daily routine. In my case, for example, my calendar, war board, and email inbox are my work/planning trifecta. Over time, I've developed the mindset that my war board is the most important of the three. It's where I'm deliberate and proactive (whereas my inbox and calendar are reactive). I want to control my time and attention, not have other people's priorities dictate to me. When I start with my war board, I know these are my plans, not someone else's.
  • Create yourself a "big rock daily work block" that you protect at all costs. A focused hour early in your routine for each day, and before your day job or external obligations take over. Open your board during this window to anchor your mind to your high-level intentions and map your daily execution steps before reacting to the outside world.

Start small.

The journey template and planning sequence is a good place for launching a war board. It provides just enough structure and a mix of longer- and shorter-term elements to keep you moving forward with purpose.

Don't try to use every variation of this system at once. Experiment. Find what works. Ignore the rest.

Simplicity and the ability to stick with it are the only things that determine whether this works for you.

Adapt the system to work for you.

  • If you hate long-term planning: Skip the 3–5 year section. Work only with 12–18 months and 90–100 days.
  • If you don’t know your goals: Start with monkey mind. Your goals will emerge from your stuckness.
  • If you’re neurodivergent: Use fewer boards, less copy, more visuals, and shorter time horizons.
  • If your life is chaotic or unpredictable: Your war board becomes your anchor. Return to it whenever you can. No guilt.
  • If you’re a chronic starter-but-not-finisher: You’re exactly who this system was built for.

Interesting side note here: I'm reading Temple Grandin's book, Visual Thinking: The Hidden Gifts of People Who Think in Pictures, Patterns, and Abstractions. In it she says that about 45% of people are a mix of verbal and visual thinkers. Most systems lean verbal, which can make them hard to follow, much less stick with and execute, especially if you're a good mix of both or fall on the more visual end of the spectrum.

I think that's what I like about the War Board Method so much—it's a blend of visual and written elements, and you can lean heavier on one or the other, depending on how your brain works (and every single brain works differently).

Working with the quirks of Milanote

The mobile inbox trick

Milanote is a visually beautiful tool on a desktop, but complex visual boards can become clunky and difficult to navigate on a mobile screen.

To solve this, do not try to open more detailed boards on your phone.

Instead, build a simple, text-based board on your home screen called "Inbox." (covered earlier).

When you're out and about, open the Milanote app and navigate directly to the Inbox sub-board. Drop a quick note, photo, or link as a reminder for yourself, and then, when you get back to your desk, you can move any Inbox notes to their appropriate place within your full war board.

The "Unsorted" tab can serve the same purpose, if you prefer. I use them interchangeably.

The redundancy protocol (protecting your system)

Your war board will become a deeply personal, incredibly valuable roadmap of your mind and life.

While cloud platforms are remarkably secure, data glitches do happen, and visual layouts can accidentally be shifted, too.

Here are a few steps you can take to secure your war board.

  • Back up using screenshots. Not ideal, obviously, but better than nothing should a digital system fail. After a big planning and war boarding session (not necessarily from day to day), screenshot your full board (frame by frame) and paste them one by one into a Google document, Dropbox, or other separate tool for safekeeping.
  • Export your boards regularly. On desktop, the "Export" link is easily accessible, and you can download each board as a PDF, PNG, Word document, Markdown, or plain text file, and you can also download all images and files within each board into a ZIP file.
  • Keep everything locked as much as possible. One Milanote quirk you'll learn quickly with use is that things are easily shifted and bumped. An accidental mouse move or pasting something within a board without checking if something's below the full length of it can wreak havoc on the visual layout and architecture of your board. So LOCK EVERYTHING. Unlock to move something, and then quickly lock it back. Click on an item, right-click (on Windows), and select "Lock position."

Another note on backups

The archive strategy: Before making major changes to your war board, duplicate it and rename it with a through-date (e.g., "War board through Dec 31, 2025"). Drag that copy into your war board archive. You'll reference old versions more than you think.

If you're war-boarding on a wall in your home or office, simply take a picture of it periodically. If you'll upload them to Google Drive or Dropbox, you can reference your board on the go and from your computer that way, too.
Frequently asked questions

Q: What if my daily life or schedule is completely chaotic and doesn't fit into a clean routine?

A: No problem. The War Board Method is adaptable and can work for a variety of situations and circumstances. The whole point of the system is to make things easy to understand and execute. Develop the habit of using your war board, even in the smallest ways (see previous section for tips), and make sure your vision is compelling and inspiring to you. If you can hold on to the enthusiasm you have for the plan, it'll make it all the easier to want to revisit it often and execute. Even if you're only able to visit it every Sunday, for example, you're still intentionally building your life, even if it's inch by inch.

Q: I feel incredibly vulnerable writing down my actual fears in the 'Here there be dragons' section. What if someone looks at my screen?

A: Your war board doesn't have to be shared with a soul, but just in case you have prying eyes around you, here are a few practical tips that might help: (1) If you share a workspace or computer, always log out (of Milanote and your computer). (2) Obscure your notes. Use code names, write your deep fears in a separate private journal, and only show the most basic elements and components on your main pages (sub-boards can contain notes and details you want to keep more private).

Q: How long should this take?

A: I live in my war board. It's always open and in the background of my computer for quick reference. But—the war board is the work. If you're trying to launch a business, for example, it's your blueprint, execution strategy, and container for managing notes and content and all the information around the business, so you're in it all the time (especially once you build the habit of using a war board). It's a living and evolving document and plan. If you use other apps for specific purposes, you can link to those in all the places where you might need to jump over to that app, but the main work exists in your war board. Planning-wise (initially and each quarter, if using "The journey" template and sequence), it can take anywhere from an hour to a half a day, but it all depends on how in-depth you want to get with your board and planning.

Q: What if I don't know what I want?

A: First, I hear you. I'm embarrassed to say how often I've written that very phrase in my journal and war board notes (I have a "Personal notes" sub-board for little journal snippets when I'm at my computer and don't feel like writing). Start there (a journal or notes sub-board) or with the monkey mind. Your goals will emerge from the stuckness.

Q: What if my goal is a project rather than a life change?

A: Perfect. The War Board Method works for lifestyle design and project management and planning all the same (and in the same place). I've used war-boarding for everything. It's the first place I start when launching or tackling anything.

Q: What should I review daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly?

A: Visit your war board overview page daily, if possible (unless you're in the chaotic-/unpredictable-life group, and then do weekly if you can). You'll live in that view of your war board. And from there, back up from your long-term vision.

  • Long-term vision, when do you want those things to happen? Twenty-five years? (If you're using Dan Sullivan / Strategic Coach philosophy, yes.)
  • Then what would you need to do, big rock-wise, to get to those long-term items? What milestones will you need to reach and by when?
  • And then what will you need, step-wise / milestone-wise, to reach those big rocks, and by when?

And then keep going until you're at actions you can take this week and then today.

"The journey" planning sequence breaks this all down for you (screenshot below):

  • Longer-term vision,
  • 3- to 5-year vision (which should include steps toward the longer-term one),
  • 12- to 18-month vision (which should include steps toward the 3- to 5-year one—or longer-term if you're not using 3- to 5-year goals),
  • 90- to 100-day plan (which should include steps toward the 12-to 18-month vision), and then
  • Those items become the focus for the quarter (which, depending on your preferences, might range between 84 and 100 days), so
  • Break those items into steps to reach each one, and keeping breaking them down until you find something you can act on today.

In Dan Sullivan / Strategic Coach terms, 25 years breaks down into 100 quarters. Break down accordingly.
Q: What if this still feels too overwhelming for me?

A: Start with a one-page "minimum viable war board" that includes:

  • Your long-term vision (25 years),
  • Your 90-day plan (What big rock can you move this quarter to get you closer to your 25-year vision? You've got 100 quarters to get there. Just pick the one that's best next, in your opinion.), and
  • The monkey mind (You need a place, in Seth Godin terms, to "put the tired." You will hit roadblocks. You will feel defeated some days. You will feel intimidated. The monkey mind gives you a place to work through those very human feelings and sources of self-sabotage.).
Guidance for the chronic quitter

If you've tried every type of journaling under the sun, Notion templates, fancy apps, and corporate-feeling productivity trackers, but can't seem to stick with them to save your life, I'm here to tell you, you are not alone, and you're not a failure.

If there's a method, I've tried it.

If there's an office supply, book, or journal, I've bought it.

I've used this system for over a decade now, and it came about from years of doing web design and launching things with other people like me—two or more faulty humans with monkey minds trying to communicate, collaborate, and get things out of our heads and into the world.

And the War Board Method is the only method that worked.

Most systems fail because they demand absolute compliance. The war board is built to adapt to you, not the other way around.

The planning sequences (like "The journey") can help you kickstart your own war board, but they're made to be flexible.

Use what works, discard what doesn't, and develop your war board to match how you work and think—and it can be as minimalistic or as beautified as you'd like to make it, too.

The War Board Method is visual, iterative, narrative-driven, emotionally honest, and designed for real life.

The only rule: Keep showing up. The war is won in small, daily increments, slowly advancing the field.

In future mini workshops, I'll be covering the other templates and real-life use cases will expand the method further, but this sequence is a strong first place to begin.

You don’t need to know everything. You don’t need to be ready or confident. You only need to begin.

Your war board will meet you where you are and grow with you as you go.
Ready to deploy your war board?
Here are all the links and files you'll need to get started.
1
Get the Milanote template.
Note: Instructions for using the template are included within the PDF guide.
2
Get the companion guide PDF.
3
Get the prompt sheet.
4
Get 1:1 support to build your war board.
5
Watch the full mini workshop.
Icons by Freepik at Flaticon
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Tilda