I'm always fascinated with the tools and techniques that are available to take advantage of social media and the Internet's vast resources. Here's one that I had missed up until now: embedding a Tweet (from Twitter) into your blog post.

The inspiration for this trick was the following Tweet from John Richardson, someone I follow on Twitter. 

If you click on the link within his Tweet, you'll get step by step instructions for how to embed a Tweet, just like I did his. I must note, however, that my Twitter page and options look a bit different from what he describes. For example, on my Twitter page, it says "Expand" rather than "Open." But otherwise, it works just fine.

Why would you want to embed a Tweet rather than simply re-Tweet it? 

Imagine my surprise and dismay when I hit the "publish" key on one of my recent blog posts, only to find that when I viewed it in my browser, the entire side bar of my blog page was gone.

The blog post was there, along with the previous posts. But the side bar with all my information about my website, photo, newsletter sign-up form and other special offers were no longer there.

Clearly, there was a serious glitch in the software, but there's been no real explanation. And no quick fix.

I was upset at first, but I've decided that this is a perfect opportunity to rebuild my side bar. Over time, it had grown a bit stale. It needed a face lift.

We all get stuck occasionally, unable to come up with that next good idea or solution to a problem. We've got a challenge right around the corner and can't think of a good way to handle it. We get writer's block.

What to do? Here are three tips.

Do something different

I was out doing yard work this weekend, absorbing the sunshine and getting my hands dirty. It's a great change of pace. As I was edging along the flower beds, I realized how easily thoughts seemed to flow. I got the idea for this post.

Just about everything in life boils down to the choices we make.

Think about your attitude. You get to choose whether to accept or reject someone, whether to get (or stay) angry, whether to be positive or negative. It's your choice.

Think about your role as a leader. You can choose to micromanage everyone else's job, or you can allow others to do what they do best and support them along the way. You can choose to stay focused on the future, or you can get bogged down in fighting yesterday's battles.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel famously said during his time as White House Chief of Staff, "You never want a serious crisis go to waste." He went on to say that a crisis gives you "an opportunity to do things that you could not do before."

We can apply that to life in general, especially when it comes to failure. None of us wants to fail, and yet it's often the pathway to future success. It presents opportunities to do things and see things that otherwise would not have been possible. Failure is even better if you can incorporate the following three elements:

When is enough, enough? When is it time to quit, pack it in, go home, try something else?

I wish I had a quick answer, but I know that our dwindling attention span makes it more and more difficult to "stay with it." If we don't see instant results, we assume we won't ever see any. As a follow-up to my previous post about beating the clock, this is an enormous challenge.

It's why marketing is so difficult. You don't really know if you're spreading the word as effectively as you can. You're not sure your message is getting out there quickly enough, or if you even have the right message.

Success typically doesn't happen overnight. It's really the result of daily progress. Take Michael Hyatt's post about his new book, Platform. He says he blogged for almost three years before he had a significant following.

Knowing that there's really no such thing as an overnight success, time is the huge variable. How much time will you devote to any single task or objective? How much time will you devote this week to the goals you really want to achieve?

You've been doing the same things in the same way for a long time. One day tends to blend into the next. Routines are well established. Life is predictable.

That likely describes all of us at one time or another. But, as we know all too well, routines can become ruts. Before we know it, we're stuck. 

The problem is complacency.