Last week, this paper gave some advice under the headline ‘Top tips for staying productive while you’re working at home’.

This week I want to offer an alternative train of thought.

Right at the top of the list of the ‘top tips’ was: "Unless you are a naturist and working from home has presented you with the opportunity to practise such a calling, then get dressed."

It went on to suggest that continuing to dress in ‘formal attire’ would make you more productive by putting you in working mode, whereas you would be in the wrong frame of mind if you wore your jim-jams or even just your skin.

But I see it differently.

More than half of my working life was home-based and I’m now retired, so this weird period of isolation we are cast into is not so strange to me.

Dressing up to work from home is all very well if you lead a life that makes you a slave to convention, but if your job or your lifestyle calls for any thinking outside the box, then think again.

Although I can confirm from experience that working from home does require some routine and some self-discipline, the trick is to make the most of the fertile environment it provides for a spot of free-thinking.

There are plenty of benefits to be had from not having to go into the office or factory, but one of the greatest blessings is not having to wear a damned tie, which I have always considered the first step to choking yourself.

It is the most pointless article of clothing a man can wear, and if you stop to think about it: pretty silly.

While others were digesting the advice they were being given to ‘get dressed’ to work at home, my daughter, who IS working from home, joined a video conference in which a colleague was dressed in a suit and tie, even though he was also working from home.

It raised a few titters, and possibly as many as if he had gone to the other extreme and turned up to the meeting nude.

At least there would have been a point to that.

People often have suspicions that there must be some ulterior motive for getting naked, but according to British Naturism – and they should know – many simply find taking off their clothes is the ultimate act of self-liberation, figuring that by freeing up your body, you are also freeing up your mind.

And they point out that while we are confined to our homes and nobody is going to be any the wiser, why not give it a try?

There could be a lot to gain when you think about the greatest people in history and realise that – whether artist, scientist, visionary or true leader – the one thing they all had in common was they were free-thinkers.

That includes Winston Churchill, who apparently spent much of his private time naked (and drinking brandy), especially during the Second World War, and even, allegedly, when he was visiting Roosevelt at the White House in 1941.

If it was good enough for him…

Seriously: if any benefit comes from the extraordinary situation we all find ourselves in, then it will be because free-thinkers will use the time to challenge conventions and come up with new ideas and fresh ways of doing things, instead of living like robots.

Luckily, we have a little time to think about it, but it should already be clear enough that if we continue to trust our future to men in suits, we truly are doomed.