This bit sort of describes Macs/PCs around 1985: Instead, I had to make conscious decisions to switch over to IM and respond to several people at once, or go t

This bit sort of describes Macs/PCs around 1985: Instead, I had to make conscious decisions to switch over to IM and respond to several people at once, or go to IRC to see what the rest of the staff was up to, or go back to Writing Kit to dedicate another hour to uninterrupted writing. It's a different mental process for a typical computer user, but it worked out a bit better than fine if personal productivity was the metric.