How to scroll Pinterest for all its worth

Do you ever find yourself scrolling Pinterest, pinning things left, right and centre, filling your brain with inspiration like you're filling a car's petrol tank? But then do you find that, instead of driving off in full creative flow, you stall…
All the potential ideas have somehow evaporated, leaving you feeling overwhelmed with no idea how to begin?

No? Just me?

Of course, that's not always the case. I often enjoy a little relaxed scrolling and pinning without really engaging my brain, comfortably knowing that all these lovely images will be safely stored in my well-ordered boards where I can find them when I need to.
But at other times Pinterest can leave me overwhelmed by imposter-syndrome and burnt out by all the sparks of ideas that have evaporated instead of starting a creative fire.

These are usually the times I've been scrolling the home feed, rather than looking for something specific.
My Pinterest feed is filled with incredible illustrations, lovely little houses, photos of South Africa, beautiful animals, and more incredible illustrations. So if it isn't photos of stuff I want to draw, it's pictures that I wish I had drawn.

And all of them spark ideas.

And ideas, coming fast, if I don't pay attention, just pop out of my memory cells like popcorn when the lid is off the pan.

But I have a solution.

It is just one solution - there may be many others, but this is all I’ve come up with so far, and it seems to be working well for me.

It is this:

(Some wise words from a wise gull.)

[gasps from the audience - sounds of glass breaking - shocked faces all round]

I know it's simple. I know it obvious. But do you do it?

I don’t.

Not often anyway.

It so happened that, one crisp Autumn afternoon a few years ago, I was fed up with what I have termed the “Flat Pinterest Feeling” (also known as Pinterest-Overwhelm), so I grabbed some paper and scrolled Pinterest with pen poised to note down every thought that popped into my head. This is the result:

No, wait… I can't find that first result. It was years ago! But here's one example that I did find hiding in my desk drawer:

I know it doesn't make for fascinating reading - and I don’t even remember what I mean by most of the notes - but when I read through it now there are a few things that spark something in me again. They spark a desire to draw, to experiment, to make a mess in my sketchbook and see what happens. I bit like Pinterest does normally, but this time there's a limited number of inspirations and it's more specific - more personal - more me.

Spelling and grammar don’t matter. Making it look pretty is unnecessary. What’s important is that it is helpful.

Here’s another, more recent, example:

My whole point with this blog post is: if you suffer from Pinterest-Overwhelm, then you might want to try take notes and see if it helps. I could have saved you a few minutes by putting this at the beginning of the post, but where’s the fun in that?

I’m curious: is there anything that you do to make Pinterest work better for you? How do you get as much from it as possible without giving too much time to it? Please tell me your thoughts in the comments.

Wishing you fun and inspiration today and always,
Robyn