Have got an idea? Want to do something? Then do it. You’ll not get very far by just thinking about it. You’ll get nowhere by not doing it.

The biggest impediment in the way of everything we don’t achieve is the lack of courage to actually do it. Heck, we can’t even fail if we don’t attempt to do it.

When it comes to blogging and working online, most of us tend to be passive learners. It’s easy to read all the information and feel all wise and knowledgeable, but any information that is not put to any use is, well, useless.

In fact, I read two kinds of books/blogs/anything readable. 1) That is practically useful. 2) That is absolutely useless but has high entertainment value, e.g. fiction.

The problem starts when I read something that I mean to read for its practical value, but instead I reduce its value to mere entertainment. Reading information gives me the satisfaction that I’ve done something useful, but if I do nothing to incorporate this new information into my blogging/webmastering activities, I might as well have read another one of those John Grisham’s legal thrillers.

So here’s the best nugget of advice anyone can ever give you to transform your life: Try all of your ideas, and don’t be afraid of failure, for if there is anything worse than failure, it’s not even trying.

If you are held back by the excuse that you are not yet ready, you’ll never be ready. There’s always more to learn, isn’t it? And what you learn from experience far outweighs what you learn from passively observing. If you want to know how to swim, you’ll have to read the instructions manual. But if you want to swim, you have to take the plunge once!

Oh and I’ve been thinking of writing smaller (Seth Godin style) posts, and see, I’ve done it!

Update: Oh scary! Many bloggers have covered different angles of the same point today: Do what’s important and do it now! Brian recounts how he went through a life-threatening accident to realize he needed to do what he loved. Dave talks about the importance of spending time with people you love and urges us to do it right now. Meryl gives tips on balancing your work and personal lives by, again, doing what’s more important rather than what you mindlessly do.

Do you have any insights to share with us too?

This is weekend, and if you are still glued to your computer pretending that the world around you does not exist, here are some great articles to keep you busy.

Blogging and misc

Using Trends In Google Reader To Manage RSS Overload by Abhijeet

To Tweet or Not to Tweet? 50+ Links & Tools by Tad

How Social Proof Can Kill or Fill Your Blog by Jonathon

8 Ways To Add Value With Link Roundup Posts by Tay

How to Show You Care About Your Customers by James

Design

19 Visual Effects That Entertain And Amuse by Brian

A Comparative Study of Logo Design between the 70s and 90s. by Jacob Cass

A Plea From 16 Most Overused Fonts by Vivien

10 tips for writing graphic design briefs by David Airey

45 Photo Editing Tutorials for Photoshop by Steven Snell

Shock! Horror! I suddenly stopped ranking for many keywords in Google SERPs.

I noticed yesterday that Google, that had been sending me 200+ visitors daily, started pretending as though I didn’t even exist. I can’t figure out why it happened. Maybe it’s just some algorithmic change and I’m just making a mountain out of a molehill, but it’s equally possible that Google thinks I’m selling text link ads.

I’ve been creating web sites for four years, and I know if a site all of a sudden drops from all its rankings, there’s definitely something wrong.

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This is a guest post by AJ Vaynerchuk. He blogs about social media, marketing, and SEO, and spends a lot of his time on Twitter.

Many bloggers use Twitter as a platform to promote their own blog. That’s an easy concept, no need to waste our time there. Instead, lets focus on something that is under-utilized by most bloggers: promoting other blogger’s content by “retweeting.”

The art of “retweeting” is best described as taking a twitter message someone else has posted, and rebroadcasting that same message to your followers. When broadcasting this message, you should give credit to the original poster. While retweeting sounds great for the original tweeter (since there is usually a link involved), retweeting can actually benefit you just as much if not more.

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Full screen editors, though simple and unexciting at face, are the perfect tool for creative writers.

Last week I wrote about different full screen text editors to choose from and (sort of) promised that I’ll expand on why writing in full screen is at least worth trying.

Well, there is no better time for it than now.

So, what are the advantages of writing in a full screen editor with no formatting options at all, when we have all kinds of word processors with the latest bells and whistles at our command?

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And it feels great!

OK, so if it sounds too preposterous, I’m not really having sex. But according to Michael Martine (aka Remarkablogger) tweeting is as fun and as unexplainable as having sex.

Last night when I read Michael’s unique view about Twitter, I said to myself, what the heck, why not give Twitter a try and find out if it’s really so addictive? So now, I’m officially joining Twitter.

If you are on Twitter, please follow my tweets.

I’ll write a detailed post about my experience on Twitter when I’ve familiarized myself with how things work on Twitter. In the mean time, if you have good or bad things to say about Twitter, please cough ‘em up in the comments!

Full screen text editor is probably the best thing I’ve discovered since I started blogging.

When I open up my full screen text editor, my creativity quadruples and ideas seem to flow from every inch of my brain.

A few days ago, Maki wrote about a full screen text editor called Dark Room and explained how it helped him concentrate better and come up with great content. Well, I needed no convincing. On some subconscious level, I badly wanted a writing app like this. I was sold.

Since then, I’ve been writing everything that needs concentration in a full screen text editor. And the results are amazing.

How to write best in full screen is a subject for another post. For now, here’s a list of 13 full screen text editors that’ll help you stay focused on writing. Take your pick.

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