I’VE noticed online there seems to be a lot more people working from home, given everything that’s happening in the world just now with this coronavirus doing the rounds. I thought this week I’d put together a wee guide on what to expect when you work from the house.

You’ll start with great intentions, but they’ll all fall by the wayside. You’ll plan to get up at the time you normally would if you were heading into work. You’ll plan to use the time you’d spend travelling to work to have a nice breakfast to set you up for the day. You’ll plan to get dressed. You’ll do nothing of the sort.

You’ll awake when your alarm goes off, at which point you’ll scoff at it. “Don’t think so, pal,” you’ll say, then break your personal record for the amount of times you’ve hit snooze.

Then you’ll wake up in a panic maybe 45 minutes later, giving you seconds to get to the computer and log on. You’ll then applaud yourself for this accomplishment which simply must now be rewarded. A coffee will do nicely. “Och, might as well make a nice breakfast since I’m in the kitchen anyway.” You’ll be adventurous here, in ways your kitchen has never seen before. The frying pan’s out and the grill’s warming up, all the while the emails start to pour in.

You’ll then sit down at your computer with your hearty meal. “I’ll stick the telly oan for a bit,” you say to yourself. “Just while I eat this, then I’ll turn it aff.” You technically started work at

nine but now it’s coming up for quarter to 11 and you’ve done hee haw.

You’re still in your jammies.

You check your emails. “Jeezo,” you say. “Is there always this many?” You go and make another coffee to psyche yourself up for this task. You check your phone while you drink your second coffee. When you come up for air and realise the time it’s now half 12. Lunchtime.

You return to the kitchen, seeing the mess you made while rustling up your decadent breakfast. “I’ll have to clean this up before I do any more work, I cannae concentrate knowing this mess is in here.” You tidy up then make another mess as you fling together a cheese toastie for lunch. You sit down to eat this and watch Loose Women on the telly.

You finish your lunch and your third coffee but you’re feeling a wee bit tired. Doing nothing really does take it out of you. So you take your laptop and head into bed. Just one of the many mistakes you’ll make today. I cannot stress enough here how bad an idea this is. Do not work where you sleep and/or relax. You’ll never be able to switch off from work ever again.

I worked from home at a wee desk in my bedroom for about 18 months and it meant work was always on my mind. I couldn’t watch a film in bed at night without glancing over at my laptop and worrying about the emails I’d be waking up to. I’d pause the film to go and check if I missed anything and end up staying up til stupid o’clock doing work that could’ve waited til the next day.

An hour or so after climbing back into your unmade bed, you start to feel a bit bogging and wish you’d had a shower. But the work is piling up now because you’ve spent every moment up until this point doing absolutely nothing productive. You need to charge on. You go and make another coffee. This is the one that shakes you from your catatonia and into action. The curtains are thrown open, you get out of your jammies and into real clothes, and head back into the living room.

You’re at the computer now and you’re flying through work. Time becomes elastic when you work from home and you can either makes minutes’ worth of work last hours or complete hours’ worth of tasks in minutes. The coffee starts to course through your body, you can smell colours now. You are a machine, tackling any tasks with ruthless efficiency.

You have another coffee. You shouldn’t. Four is the limit

because you have no way of burning off the excess energy it gives you. I used to roll socks into a wee ball and kid on I was hitting free kicks, trying to get it into the washing machine from the living room. You could say this was procrastination, but it wasn’t – it was necessary. You need to get the blood pumping.

You sink coffees number five and six. You are standing over your computer now, legs apart in some kind of power stance. Smoke comes off your fingertips as you type. The phone goes and you bark your replies down the line. The work gets done as the caffeine crash you’re experiencing starts to really hit. You flop on to the couch. You are broken. Knackered. There’s so much caffeine in your body now it means when you go to bed later you’ll simply be staring at the inside of your own eyelids for hours. It’s a good laugh.