How to Keep Pinterest from Being a Time Suck

We’ve all been there.  You’ve gone onto Pinterest to pull up a recipe, or get an idea for FHE… and 2 hours later you realize you’re still there, pinning a million ideas that you’ll never get around to doing.  Dinner’s still not made, you’re no closer to actually having an FHE lesson prepared and you wonder why you got on in the first place.

Pinterest is an awesome resource.  I’ve seen so many awesome tricks and tips for making my life easier and better, but I also know how easy it is to get sucked in for hours at a time without getting anything done.  I’ve come  up with a couple of techniques that I’ve started to use to help me make my Pinterest time productive rather than wasteful.

I think the best thing I’ve done is change my Pinterest bookmark from going to the Pinterest home page, to going directly to my personal boards page (i.e. http://pinterest.com/techiechic/ instead of http://pinterest.com).  That way when I’m logging on to find a recipe or idea that I’ve already posted I can go right to it rather than seeing a whole bunch of other brilliant ideas on my home page.  Also, if I am just logging in to find a good idea or browse for a little while, this encourages me to look at the things I’ve already pinned and actually DO one of those things instead of pinning 50 more things.  Why spend an hour pinning things when you could spend it actually starting to make that skirt, do that exercise, or clean your house?  It’s a good reminder to me that there are plenty of things I could be doing instead of trying to find more 🙂

The other thing I’ve done is set up a separate Pinterest board for recipes that I’ve already tried and one for recipes that I haven’t gotten around to yet.  This makes it easier for me to find the recipes that we already know and love instead of having to sift through the hundreds of recipes that are waiting for me to try.  It also makes it easier for me when someone asks for a recipe to be able to tell them – it’s on my Pinterest board of recipes I’ve tried – so they don’t have to sift through a million recipes either.  Plus, it lets my friends know that this recipe does have my personal stamp of approval and not just an enticing picture.  I always try to write my own reviews of those recipes as well, especially if I have tips for making it better.  I would recommend doing this for other projects as well, but I definitely use it most for recipes!

This last one may seem kind, but remember – your friends won’t know if you’re following them or not!  When I do surf my newsfeed on Pinterest I’ve found that there are a lot of things that my friends pin that I really don’t care about.  I’m already married so I don’t care what wedding dresses/cakes/flowers my single friends are saving, I’m not big on makeup so the latest nail painting tutorials don’t appeal to me, I’m not a photographer so I’m not looking for the best ways to pose my subjects.  When I see pins on my home page that are in a category that doesn’t appeal to me I simply click on the pin and unfollow that particular board – not the person, just that board.  It has made my browsing SO much more effective because I see fewer results that aren’t applicable to my life.  It saves me a lot of time not having to scroll through those ideas, and I really don’t think anyone is offended that I’m not following their makeup board anymore 🙂

That’s all I have for now.  What about you?  Does anyone else have great tips for using Pinterest wisely?