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Comment by jwdunne | Hacker News Reader

As a funny side note, having just one outfit to wear everyday eliminates the cost of that decision, giving more resources to other decisions. I believe Einstein did something similar simply because he wanted to focus his energies on the interesting stuff.

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It's truly trivial to select clothing to wear during the day. If someone told me that they were 'saving resources' by wearing the same thing most of the time I think I would laugh in their face. I have to think it was just some personal branding on Jobs part, as in Everytime you see the dude he's 'the same'/consistent, depending on how you interpret that.

It's only trivial if you either genuinely don't care about what you wear or actually like selecting clothes. If you do care about what you wear but don't like selecting clothes, I can see why it would annoy you.

I feel the same way about washing dishes. I care about having clean dishes but I really don't like washing dishes. Even now with a dishwasher, I get annoyed having to hand-wash the dishes that aren't dishwasher-safe.

> It's only trivial if you either genuinely don't care about what you wear

In my case it's jeans and a t-shirt, clean jeans are piled next to clean t-shirts, I work my way down both piles until there is one of each then I put the entire laundy basket through the wash and re-pile them.

Unless it's a special event or a meeting I really don't care, jeans and a t-shirt is fine for day to day wear and one t-shirt is much the same as another.

It tends to be the picking out and maintaining a wardrobe of clothes that takes the effort for most people I think, not the actual choosing of shirt and pants in the morning. Of course, billionaire CEOs could easily just hire wardrobe consultants to handle that for them - and I'm sure many do - but some don't care, beyond just being presentable. And so they wear basically the same thing every day.

I dunno, man.

Clothing choices are a pretty big stressor for my SO and by extension me.

That always struck me as lame. If someone that well off wants to eliminate that decision, then just have a professional clothes person create clothing matches. 'A' goes with 'A'. 'B' goes with 'B'.

What it really is, is someone making a statement about how important their decisions are.

Lots of well off people still wear interesting clothing.

I wear a collared shirt and black pants to work every day, but the shirts are different colours. Frankly, my fashion sense isn't great but I look decent in a nice collated shirt and my wife does have a great sense of style (heck, she makes a dork like me look good, I'm always in awe of this ability - it's like a superpower!) so this makes complete sense to me.

It sounds like more of an ASD symptom. Having routines and being unable to break them. I have mild ASD and often wear the same clothes/copies of the same stupid free startup tshirt for no real reason other than subconsciously I hate change. I also really haven't bought new clothes for years due to it being too much change to handle. I do make sure they are clean when I wear them tho!

He did hire a professional -- to design his daily uniform.

http://gawker.com/5848754/steve-jobs-on-why-he-wore-turtlene...

I think these people apply the same principle to many other decision making processes in their lives, not just picking clothes, which is very visible hence everyone talks about. I guess saving on clothes is small but many little things add up quickly.

> That always struck me as lame.

That's bullshit. Wearing the same outfit added some mystic to Steve Jobs. It may not work on the public persona of every CEO but it obviously did for Jobs.

It's a great idea. I have a dozen of the same shirt in different colors, like red, blue, green, black. When folding, I roll together a shirt, underwear, and pair of socks. Likewise I make gym bundles - shirt, shorts, socks, and a wash cloth for the shower.

I still get to make a decision about which color shirt I'm going to wear that day, but don't need to think about even reaching for socks, since they're already in the shirt roll.

Nice. I switched to the solid colors shirt and slacks outfit a year ago. This sounds like a good improvement to the process. Those that scoff at it -- I went from wasting about 1hr to now spending about 20 min in the morning "getting ready". 40 minutes every day is a good chunk of time:

http://www.xkcd.com/1205/

(admittedly the outfit choosing part was only about 5 of those minutes, but still a good chunk of time over 5 years)

edit: oh yeah, I don't even choose a color. I just line them up ROYGBV.

"As a funny side note, having just one outfit to wear everyday eliminates the cost of that decision, giving more resources to other decisions."

Recommended. I have a "uniform" that I wear[1][2] that works very well for me across different weather, places and events. I established it about ten years ago and have reaped quite a return from that initial investment.

Now, in addition to my default "uniform" I also have codified what I wear the rest of the time into 2-3 different other[3] "uniforms" that are better optimized for a few different situations. I hope to get at least 10 years out of these investments.

[1] Jeans, Next Level poly/cotton vintage t-shirt, long sleeved patagonia capilene 2 (black). Running shoes.

[2] Since I have at least 10 of each item, I always have something clean to wear.

[3] Casual warm, casual cold, manual labor.

It's less that they don't have to pick the clothes. And more that they don't give a shit (about variation in style.)

This is one of the things I really enjoyed about going to war in the Army: You can go for a couple of weeks in the same clothes without showering and nobody harps on you for it.

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