Hack Your Day And Stay Motivated With Pinterest

Hack Your Day And Stay Motivated With Pinterest:

Pinterest is an online pinboard which allows you to share images by ‘pining’ them to your profile. Well, a lot of other sites also do allow you to share images, but I guess it’s the sheer ease and visual appeal…or perhaps an X-factor that has made Pinterest catch everyone’s interest. Not to mention dollars from investors and hordes of media attention in the process.

We did a walkthrough last year when it arrived on the scene. Jumping on to the Pinterest bandwagon is fairly easy despite the large red Request an invite button. I got mine within 24 hours. You can also get one from someone who is already on the social pinboard.

With that done, I am sure you will while away a few hours playing around creating pretty image boards or pinboards. It’s already being used by brands, celebrities, educational institutes, libraries, and even the U.S Army as a showcase and as a traffic generator. I wanted to come back to Pinterest for a more personal reason…personal development and motivation. Here are a few ideas…

Pin Down Your Health

Nothing sets off a day like exercise. You will be better served if you hit the treadmill instead of Pinterest, but if your motivation is flagging then browse around for healthy photo-bits or make one of your own boards with inspiring photos and posters. Visualization has often been cited as a chief motivator, especially when it comes to fitness. No one likes to put up their paunches against the washboard abs of fitness hotshots, so it kind of helps to set a benchmark.

Pin Down Thoughts to Live By

Words have the same effect. I guess, slightly more so if they can be beautifully visualized on a Pinterest board. The easiest way to collect thoughtful quotes is from the site itself as there’s quite a large collection available. Simply use the search on Pinterest and use a keyword you want to use for the particular day. For instance: happiness or life in general. Free stock photo sites often have nice collections of quotes in pictures. One of my favorites is here. You can create your own motivational posters and upload them directly to Pinterest.

Visualize Your Bucket List

I had talked about the concept of bucket lists and how they can help us set life goals in 100 Things to Do Before I Die: 6 Sites To Create Your Own List. With Pinterest, you can take all your goals written in text and translate them into visual pictures. Just looking at them once in the morning should help to straighten that slouch and put your best foot forward. I have broken down my own into different Pinterest boards – there’s one on skills I would like to master – but the master vision board goes by the name of ‘Dreams…One Day’.

Watch Inspiring Videos

Pinterest also lets you create video boards. There’s a lot of inspiration there. Take for example, sites like TED. Just like me, you can pick up excellent motivational videos from Joel’s 8 Inspirational Videos That Will Instantly Pump Up Your Motivation. I have started using Pinterest as a video bookmarking tool and I hope it perks me up when I hit the troughs.

Pin Down Articles worth a Read

Pinterest may seem like a visual pinboard. But you can also use it as a nifty bookmarking tool to pin your absolute favorite articles that you like reading again and again. Pinterest directly links to the webpages you pin to. But it will only work if the webpage has an image or a video. That’s why unfortunately it does not work on a favorite site of mine – Zenhabits.net. But there is my RSS feed, and then there is my pinboard here for me to visualize articles that I have kept for reading on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

Create Your DIY Lab

Though I haven’t started on this myself, Pinterest is a DIY-ers haven. Let’s remember that quite recently (and still), Pinterest was driven by female audiences majorly. And from the DIY boards, there are many of them with diverse sets of DIY skills – from crafts to recipes, and furniture to knick-knacks. Check out DIY Projects. There’s a lot of inspiration there. And then you can create your own and advertise them for sale by adding a price to the pin.

Note: To add a price to a pin, type the $ or £ symbol followed by the number amount in the description. When you are finished, click Pin It.

Have a Laugh

In the end, Pinterest is also filled with humor. In pictures. Just do a keyword search with words like ‘funny’, ‘humor’, etc. And have a laugh to perk up your day.

Pinterest could get addictive. You can not only pin, but share, like, collaborate, and comment too. But beyond the hoopla, you can definitely use it in a lot of useful ways. Brands have jumped onto the Pinterest bandwagon. Online eStore owners are displaying their wares. What do you intend to use it for? Give us a shout in the comments. Also, point us to your interesting boards.