One of the things that writers struggle with is momentum. Keeping your writing flowing, day after day, can be a real challenge especially if your processes and systems of writing depend on big blocks of uninterrupted time. The thing about your life - and your job - is it is full of interruptions. Work interruptions, family interruptions and ALL THE THINGS can get in the way of a writing practice that feels like one where you make consistent gains every time you sit down to write. The answer?

Besides changing your systems and processes of writing so they do not depend on big uninterrupted blocks of time, a short, quick fix is to have a reliable 'power down' system in place so that when you are out of time, you take 1 minute to write down the following instruction to yourself:

• Where am I right now in the text?

• What was I thinking?

• What do I need to do next when I return?

Putting this in the document, highlighted so you can see it, will save you having to re-read the thing all over again when you do return to writing, thus dispensing with the 'warm up' routine of many inefficient writers. It is a simple, quick and effective intervention, and whether the interruption is one of hours, days or weeks, it is much easier to return quickly to the core of your task with this in place.

This one practical intervention will stop those ripples of interruption endlessly spooling outwards.