Christopher Knight, CEO and publisher of EzineArticles.com, had an interesting blog article the other day about using a stopwatch to increase your writing speed.

Thanks to FlyLady, I’ve been using a similar method lately also.

With a busy toddler, I often find myself stopping and starting a writing assignment…multiple times.

So here’s my Stopwatch Method:

1. Start the timer and focus on the task at hand
2. Stop the timer to change a diaper or take my daughter to the potty
3. Restart the timer…focus for a few minutes
4. Stop the timer to play “ring around the rosie”
5. Restart the timer…try to focus for another few seconds
6. Stop the timer to nurse my daughter

You get the idea.

But the amazing thing is that it works!

Before I had the timer, I felt like I wasnt getting anything done. And I wasn’t. I didn’t focus at all, and I didn’t really know how long I was taking to complete an article or other task.

A timer brings it into perspective. Now I can say to myself with confidence that I spent 2 hours writing.

Sometimes I even set the timer to 15 minutes (or more) to focus on my most important task:

• Uninterrupted play with my daughter (no email, work thoughts, or phonecalls allowed).