My first thought upon seeing this paper was that in 20 years, when you get to work in the morning, you are going to be required to put on your “thinking cap” which will literally track your thoughts to make sure you are focusing a required (say… 75%) amount of time on work related things.

When you get your performance reviews, they could say, “Now, Bob, we know your personal life has been a little hectic recently”.

You would respond, “Yes, but I’ve gotten all of my work done, and even done on time”

Their retort could be, “Sure, bob, you have, and we appreciate that, but the thing is… Well, you could have done more. And we know this for a fact, Bob. You see, we know that you spent 34% of your time thinking about your house (currently under construction) and another 7% thinking about your kid, and 13% thinking about your wife. And actually, Bob, we’re sad to say you apparently only spent 23% of your time on the Petterman account. Now, Bob, tell me you couldn’t have gotten it done even quicker, and better, had you spent a full 75% of your thoughts on the account.”

“But I billed 7 hours a day on that account, and I worked on it every one of those hours!”
“Sure, Bob, we know you did, but the thing is, your mind wasn’t really on the account. You were off thinking about your house while you were laying out the prototype designs rather than in the zone (as we like to call it) that we want our employees to be in while on task.”

“Well if Shelly didn’t have her music on-”

“-Bob, please, we know how much that distracted you. 1.3% of your focus was disturbed by Shelly’s music. I’m only measuring a .4% increase in blood pressure there as well, which brings up another thing. What’s your problem with Frank? It seems that you dislike him a lot. Any time he comes by your desk we pick up some really… negative thoughts…”

You can see where this is going, and it really isn’t good. I toyed with writing an entire short story on this, but I just don’t have the time.