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Comment by torrent-of-ions | Hacker News Reader

I dress up for work. I am one of the better dressed people at my work. I wear a coloured shirt, smart jeans, brown dress shoes (brogues) and a sports jacket. Yes, for my workplace, this is "up". I wish I could wear a suit and white shirt to work, but a general rule of thumb is only to dress one notch higher than the median.

I used to wear the same as everyone else (shorts and t-shirt), but I really enjoy the separation between work and home that nice clothes bring. When I get home I remove my shirt and hang it up. I put my shoe trees in my shoes. On the weekend I dress casually. It feels good. If you always dress casually then you never dress casually.

On Sundays I polish my shoes to a mirror shine. When my shirts are dirty I wash and iron them carefully. It's a discipline that gives meaning to my life.

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I agree, it's a similar effect for me. I like that my dress pants and dress shirts serve to separate work from home.

I view my morning routine, with the special clothes, special shoes, special bag, and even my "special" commuter car (that I don't drive on weekends) as a sort of liturgical practice. I wake up, I shower, I groom, I put the clothes on a certain way, I gather my things in the same order, I get one of only a handful of breakfast options, make coffee, and leave for work. I even kiss my wife and kids in the same order (youngest to oldest, oldest of course being my wife).

This seems boring and repetitive to a lot of people, but it's actually incredibly freeing for me. Because it is all so routine, I usually spend my mornings thinking about the book I was reading the night before, or the news, or some other topic. I don't have to pay attention to what I am doing because it just happens without "me" really being part of it. It allows me to focus on ideas that matter to me instead of menial activities.

For me, this liturgy would be interrupted without those special clothes and special shoes. I would likely find myself making choices and decisions I really don't have a desire to make.

It feels very ... rigid.

In contrast to this, my mornings are a total chaos: kids. They obey rules if they arr funny. So I have to be funny, which means I just can't be that rigid.

So we just have fun every morning, which makes my work time also pleasant and light. An of course, very casual.

EDIT: I did not said that the person is autistic. Just the way it feels. There is a fine distinction. Of course there is nothing wrong with a structured life and such a person is perfectly healthy. Just to be fair, changed the word.

That's a pretty offensive description. People can like structure without having a severe developmental disorder.

Sorry, didn't wanted to sound like that. Just changed the work accordingly. There was no intention of offending anyone, so bear with me.

Autistic is not an adjective to describe routine or odd quirks, but an actual condition.

Thanks for pointing me this out, I have a circle of people who regularly use this adjective to describe this kind of strange, never changing, routine type of activity.

Based on your comments and edit, it sounds like you genuinely weren't trying to be offensive.

What I'd say is that we're all driven by habit more than we realize. It sounds like the parent poster has cultivated a habit that's healthy and productive for them. They actually enjoy it and it brings a positive structure to their life.

Someone who dresses down every day is also guided by a habit. It may be deliberate, or it may not be. I'm not being judgemental - I happen to mostly wear t shirts and jeans these days, though ones I really enjoy.

Finding a habit that makes your life better can be freeing. It automates something you have to do every day anyway, and the alternative of making a choice every day to do something unique could actually be a negative - it burns up valuable mental resources that culminate in decision making fatigue, which can really mess with your willpower by the end of the day.

In a sense we all rigidly follow habits, or a script. But mindfully shaping them can be a powerful tool.

> I even kiss my wife and kids in the same order (youngest to oldest, oldest of course being my wife).

Meet George Jetson!

My decisions consist of "This shirt is on top?" Done. "These pants are still not dirty from yesterday?" Done.

I do like dressing up to go out, but all the ironing and caretaking involved... too much work for every day.

I will very occasionally (every few months) wear a shirt and tie to work. Almost without fail, I get pulled into a manager's office after lunch asking me if I'm interviewing and looking to leave.

This is why you have to dress up at least once every couple weeks. So it's not suspicious when you are interviewing.

Why wouldn't you just change your outfit before coming in to work? It's not that hard to change in your car.

Or better yet just take the day off? It seems like interviews at most places last for 5-8 hours anyways.

If you're interviewing at several different places within a short timespan, that could arouse suspicion.

How about just wearing your normal work cloths to the interview? Places that will ping you for not wearing a suit probably haven't made the best hiring decisions in the past.

I know this article is about US workers, where a lot of people drive to work, but even then, not everybody drives to work or has a car.

I am the polar opposite of you, apparently. I work from home, and there's no guarantee I'll even be wearing a shirt on any particular day (provided it's warm enough). I enjoy the bleed over of work and home life -- I work all the time anyway and enjoy my work, so being at home just allows me to create a work life balance that works for me.

When I'm not doing work for my job, I'm doing work for side projects, non-profits I volunteer for, local activism, or work in my garden or on the fixer upper next door my partner and I own. I dress much the same every day -- casually as appropriate for the weather. In the winter that means corduroys, flannel shirts, and several wool sweaters. In the summer it means as little as possible - no shirt and thai fisherman pants are not uncommon. I'll put on a shirt if I have to jump on video.

This life style works really well for me. I've been at it for 5 years now and I really love it. And I'm very productive. To each their own shrug.

I'm curious, do you occasionally try dressing up before working? There is a definite placebo affect when you dress up.

Nope. I don't really own any formal wear and I've always kind of hated it. I don't think I would get a similar placebo effect to you, because I have very different associations with it. I think, for me, it would be uncomfortable, awkward, and distracting. That's how I felt about it the one job I did have to dress up for (and my coworkers gave me crap for just how barely dressed up I was... just barely inside the lines of the dress code).

Sometimes I'll go to a coworking space or a cafe when I need that sort of kick in the butt change of environment. But for the most part, I need as comfortable and familiar an environment as possible in order to get in the zone.

More than 5 minutes a day thought on clothing and what others wear show that one has idle time to spare- and can not use that for something really productive.

It might be different for sales, but for problem-solving, stability and familiarity in the environment (clothing) are most important.

I know what you mean by a 'notch' of dress level, but it's surprising that such a discretization exists. Why are there discrete, generally agreed notches for a multi-dimensional continuous quantity? Humans seem to do this for many things, like phonemes and colors and times of day. Do we avoid clothing halfway between notches, like jorts or terry-cloth tuxedos, for the same reason we avoid uttering phonemes on the boundary between two adjacent ones in our native language?

Isn't it just because it would be odd to wear bermuda shorts with a shirt and tie?

That appears to be perfectly respectably business attire in the Bermudas: http://media.cmgdigital.com/shared/lt/lt_cache/thumbnail/960...

Well, shoot. That actually looks really great.

I recommend reading this comment in Patrick Bateman's voice [1].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rk93hTVRpW8

> If you always dress casually then you never dress casually.

From my days wearing suits every work day. "If you always dress formal you never dress formal". It ruined the experience of dressing up for me.

This is the way I look at it too. I have recently lost a fair amount of weight, and I can now find clothes that fit with relative ease. I'll be the first to admit I clean up pretty well. It is honestly enjoyable now, and I am glad I have never had to dress up for work or I would hate it.

Another thing I noticed in when working in London in the early 2000's when a lot of people where still required to wear suits to work. A lot of people are perfectly capable of wearing a suit and tie and still look like a complete and utter slob.

I see this all the time. Sleeves a mile long, bunched up slacks. Dude, by something remotely close to your size or get it tailored (or both).

To be fair, back in the days when everyone wore a suit to work, the suit was not considered formalwear. (It is called a lounge suit, after all.) It was much more common to wear semi-formal attire like a tuxedo to a fancy event.

>If you always dress casually then you never dress casually

I can't go naked to work

> but I really enjoy the separation between work and home that nice clothes bring.

Holy cow, I follow exactly that principle but never realized it until you put it into words. My office is super casual, but I'm always wearing at least neat jeans and usually a button-down shirt. It feels right even though it's not necessary -- and you finally put my finger on why, that dressing up for work creates separation and room to dress down when not at work.

I do the same sort of outfit. I used to wear a t-shirt everyday, but I prefer a nice, tucked in button up now. Paired with some nice leather shoes (usually loafers in my case), I like being a little more dressed up than down.

I go back to my casual look on the weekend, but I'm glad I started dressing up a bit more.

I'm just one of these people for whom clothes have no effect on my mood. Whether I'm wearing casual clothes or a beautiful dress, I don't feel much different. It seems, to me, a little dangerous to allow your dress to dictate your mood so much.

Dangerous? I wouldn't say it's dangerous. Fashion is like art or music. It's an expression of who you are. I would argue that vanity is such a large part of humanity that, to others, it IS who you are - or at least who you are perceived as.

If allowing fashion to be a reflection of yourself is dangerous then I would argue that the music you listen to while coding, the background on your desktop, and the decorations on your desk are also dangerous.

Of course, if you're Mr. Spock or Mark Zuckerberg, maybe these are all inefficiencies in your life and you've successfully minimal-ized your life into an exact replica of an IKEA catalog.

Everyone knows you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, now you're saying the cover of the book influences how the book feels about itself?

Even if you've 'minimal-ized' your life to that extent you have still made specific choices in your fashion/aesthetic that are reflective of yourself.

The specific types of sweatshirts/T-shirts you haven't removed from your closet. The specific keyboard and how you position it on your otherwise bare desk.

It may be minimal, but it's still just as much an expression of who the designer is regardless of their intentions.

i think that if someone makes you dress a certain way, it's going to be tough to enjoy it. if you do it on your own, as a passion or just to differentiate yourself from others, it can be fun and even relieve stress.

I disagree that it is a greater point when you consider how important rituals are to many people and gp post has a very valid point.

Intrinsic motivation, 100%. Basically the internal reward you get from dressing for the situation is the driver, rather than the external drivers, rewards, punishments, that drive extrinsically motivated types.

What are Smart Jeans?

"Smart" in this context means well-groomed or tidy. So, "smart jeans" would be a nice pair of designer jeans, no holes, stylish, etc.

I love this comment.

"You mean your jeans aren't continuously reporting biometrics to your phone? How do you make it through your day?!"

"Smart Jeans have sensors to monitor the movement of your legs to accurately detect steps, removing any chance of false positive burned calories, helping people loose weight. Join the fitness revolution today."

That reminds me of the Office episode when Jim wears a tuxedo to work. Hilarity ensued.

I agree, but let's say why we are doing it; we want to look better than the rest.

There's nothing wrong with it. These days it just might backfire though. "Hay--what's fancy boy trying to hide? Ability?"

I got used to dressing for work, and occasions. I still tuck my shirts in. I would never wear a hoodie to work, or even cringe saying hoodie.

I always refused to wear the noose for men--the Tie.

I wish that adornment was relegated to The Smithsonian.

Never saw the need. It was always in my way. Never liked the feeling of them around my neck. Plus--I'm color blind, so matching always enticed small talk, "That's a in--teresting Tie?"

I am so glad the younger generation toned down the business garb. I got to hand it to Zuckerburg. Keep those tees, and jeans. I hope he's 80, and still dressing down.

I'm at the point now, where I question the ability of the fashion plate at work. And that goes for both genders.

>jeans

>sports jacket

>"well dressed"

pick two

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