So you’ve finally gotten out from under The Man’s Thumb™. Good for you! The Man has his Thumb over most people, holding them down, pinning them into a notebook, and putting them on the shelf to gather dust and be thrown away after failing to be sold in The Man’s Estate Sale™. 

But not you! You’re working from home! You’ll be gathering your OWN dust from now on, thank you very much!

You’re probably thinking, this’ll be a cinch! I’ll just do what I always do, except from home and without wasting time commuting! Well, maybe you will, and maybe you’ll walk around all day with a smug sense of superiority to me, the writer of this Working from Home guide, who has a lot of trouble staying motivated and whose hygiene has suffered and who had to change his Grubhub password in order to stop ordering food for every meal except breakfast which is just coffee and whatever’s leftover from Grubhub. So if you’re that guy, go to Hell, for everyone else, here’s the guide.

Change Your Grubhub Password

Yeah, you’re working, and you’re making money, so who cares if you spend a little money on ordering lunch? It’s actually MORE efficient, because you can keep working instead of stopping to make lunch or go pick it up somewhere. No. Idiot. It is not more efficient.

Grubhub charges a fee! A fee for food! And in order to get delivery from anywhere decent, there’s probably an order minimum, so you have to order two lunches. “I’ll just eat save one for dinner,” you’re probably thinking, very smugly. “Then I’ll only pay one fee and get two meals!” Wrong! You are being very naive. You will eat two lunches and then will be too full to leave the couch (which replaced your desk weeks ago when you realized you could lay down and work and nobody would know), and then when dinner time comes and your wife is wondering about what to have for dinner, you’ll have to eat dinner again, because she can never know that you ate two lunches. NEVER! 

Why, if she knew that you had eaten two lunches, she might also discover that you’re working from the couch, and most of the work you’re doing is on the Playstation and it’s only work in the sense that you don’t enjoy it, but you do it anyway. WHY DIDN’T EITHER OF MY TWO LUNCHES TASTE LIKE ANYTHING?!

Get Off the Couch

At least ONE of those lunches should have had some flavor, right? It was Thai food, it should have been spicy. I’ll walk to the Thai place for dinner and see if I can taste that. 

STILL NOTHING! Is it me? I didn’t do any work today, maybe it’s guilt. Have I been cursed to not enjoy things anymore because I don’t have a Protestant Work Ethic™? 

Dress for Success

Maybe I’m so filthy that I can’t taste anything over the stink of my own fetid sweatclothes. Wait, the article. I have to finish. 

Put on a suit and sit in your breakfast nook and work.

Hazard a Nap 😉

I fell asleep for 3 hours one day and nobody came to stop me.

Take Pride in Your Accomplishments

This only works if you’re still doing work at this point, but you’re not, are you? You’re calling into meetings and LYING about your work day. You haven’t finished a thing in weeks and you’re not about to change now, it’s been working so well! Maybe if you can do just one task, people will give you positive feedback and you’ll be able to pull out of this spiral.

Sign Off at the Usual Time

It’s already after 7! I haven’t done anything! I’ll be up past midnight now, probably long past midnight. 

Wake Up Early and Get Something Done

No way I’m getting up early tomorrow, I worked until 2:30. I’ll go to the 9 o’clock meeting, but then I’m getting back in bed.

As you can see, working from home can be a joy if you play your cards right. Just remember, it’s all about self control and LIES HORRIBLE LIES NO ONE CAN KNOW!