I find this setup quite helpful for:
- breaking down huge goals (such as learning a new language)
- having short/mid/long term goals all available at a glance
- giving priority to stuff I'd otherwise keep procrastinating (I tend to procrastinate for weeks or months doing several things until I put everything in one checklist at the top of the current year column and power through them all in a short time)
- giving myself some perspective and appreciate all the things achieved in the past months/years. Things that were once just dreams or seemed very hard to achieve are now the normal day-to-day life and it's way too easy to undervalue them.
I use the board in a positive way, in the sense that I don't see deleting tasks or failing to achieve something as some kind of failure. I only celebrate the green "done" labels.
EDIT: formatting