It's much easier to do something when you have no choice but to do it. If you have to commute to office, you have to do it, period. If you want to do "virtual commute time" when working from home, you have to somehow justify it to yourself (and your spouse), against the ongoing pressure of thoughts and words like, "I can skip my 'commute' this time to do just this one errand / complete this one task / read this HN article...".