THE WHY OF THE TIE. After many years of wearing them daily, about ten years ago I realized that it had more to do with me, as a young executive, wanting to look more formal, more 'grown up', to be taken more 'seriously' by the people I was doing business with. Later not only I wasn't so young, alas, but I started to work mainly from home.

No, I'm not one of those guys who work from home on their pajamas: in order to mantain some sanity, I don't sit at my computer until I'm showered, groomed, dressed --casually, but dressed-- and had breakfast; then I 'commute' to my home office. I believe you need to keep that routine almost as if you were going to the office, not only to be mentally better focused on work when you're working, but also to separate the professional and private lifes (disclaimer: I still haven't had the strength to stop checking and responding email on the road on my cell, but nobody's perfect).

Still, one thing is to be presentable even if you're working alone at home; wearing a suit and tie would be a bit too much...

UPDATE. Edited, but just to break the entry into paragraphs; I realized it was all in one big chunk of text.