We’ve worked so hard at enabling our computers to multitask effectively–and increasingly faster–that we have far surpassed the human ability to multitask. Don’t get me wrong; being able to continue browsing the web or working on a document while I’m downloading a large file or processing some video is obviously invaluable. It’s hard to imagine a time when we actually had to sit and wait helplessly while our computer chugged away at some data.

Unfortunately, some of us humans might try so hard to leverage our computer’s multitasking abilities that the ultimate bottleneck becomes the limit of our own mental concentration. You’re working on a document, but you also have your email client open and perhaps a few tabs on your web browser. Before you know it, you’ve wasted a significant period of time replying to email or going off on a tangent through the web, when the most important task at hand was just to finish typing up that document.

Enter WriteRoom. It may seem archaic by today’s standards to boot up your computer into a word processor program and to only be able to use your computer for that purpose until you finish and boot into another program, but it sure didn’t test human self-control and concentration like the systems we have today. WriteRoom duplicates that simple, distraction-free experience, and while you’re at it, gives you a bit of nostalgic joy in the process. Sure, you could get a similar affect by opening TextEdit (on the Mac) or Notepad (on Windows), but where’s the joy in that experience?

Did you grow up on an Apple ][ using AppleWorks with a green-on-black monochrome monitor? WriteRoom’s default scheme duplicates just that environment. Did you have the DOS PC’s common white-on-blue? Or can you just not stand anything but black-on-white? Fine, the color scheme is customizable. So is the font, so you don’t have to stick with a monospaced font, although it sure adds to the nostalgia.
And the best part is that you don’t have to give up the multitasking bit to use WriteRoom. You can run iTunes and download that huge file in the background, but experience a visually simple and uncluttered experience while working on your text document.

WriteRoom is for the Mac only, and the original version is free. A clone called Dark Room was written to respectfully “capture the essence of WriteRoom” for Windows machines, and is also free.