Why I wear the same shirt every day
waxman.me
waxman.me
I would give the opposite advice. The easiest thing you can do to make people like you more, trust you more and respect your opinion more is to dress well and appropriately.
Job's outfit and Zuckerberg's hoodies work the same way (whether that was the intention or not, I think not). The same part of human brains that stupidly subconsciously judges people by the way they are dressed is doing the same thing with them. They show status by being able to openly reject the standard social expectations around clothes.
So call it a psychology hack or a life hack or whatever but if you are a founder of a startup then you are meeting and needing to impress a fair number of people. You can handicap yourself because you are convinced that it "shouldn't matter" or "this is the startup uniform" or you can be pragmatic about it and gain an edge for relatively minor effort.
- So what, who says he can't emulate Steve Jobs?
- I call that BS. That is your small thinking and so you should limit yourself to it. I say go emulate successful people and do what you want to do.
The lesson a would-be successful person should learn from Jobs is to focus on what's essential. If you become so distracted with trying to copy minor habits, you've missed the point. And Steve Jobs was successful far before he started wearing the same thing all the time, anyway.
Right, go emulate the dressing habits of successful people, that's so much better advice than my "small thinking".
Mimicking a famous person's eccentricity isn't exactly popular - the folks who idolize SJ will think you're an ass while the folks who hate him will think you're a cultist.
Of course not looking sloppy is important (hair, fingernails, showers, clean clothes, etc.), but other things are much much more important. Integrity, getting things done, an inspiring and/or knowledgable personality..
Also: I don't know why Steve Jobs has to mentioned in every second blog post on HN. Yes, he wore the same clothes all the time. But you don't need his permission to do so. You should be your own boss, and your own fashion consultant. (When in doubt, ask your wife or girlfriend though. ;))
Most of your fashion cohorts are cartoon characters?
Because it's not considered to be "normal". If you wear the same clothes every time, people will notice and think you are weird. You don't want people to think you are weird if you startup.
What a terrible reason not to do something that makes sense to you. If your success in the startup world is so strongly linked with how others perceive your superficialities, that's not a healthy environment to be in. You might as well add "don't be ugly" too, because everyone knows that beautiful people tend to have more success, and you want to maximize your chances of succeeding.
> but other things are much much more important. Integrity, getting things done, an inspiring and/or knowledgable personality..
Absolutely. I didn't mean to imply that dressing well was actually important in that sense. It's an easy way to have people think you have more integrity, are more knowledgeable/inspiring/interesting, get more things done. Do with that what you will, your competition will.
And man, I just don't know about the rest of that. If you can't wear what you want to because you're doing a startup...
My point was that the reason only works for steve jobs, mere mortals will be judged for that behaviour. You still "save time" but that's a post-rationalization from someone who dislikes the pressure of dressing themselves if I've ever heard one.
> And man, I just don't know about the rest of that. If you can't wear what you want to because you're doing a startup...
Hey, do whatever you want. I was just pointing out the tradeoff. Also because I find it funny that the same people who would recognize a joke about a "shirt of +2 charisma" are the most least likely to be wearing them or even recognize they exist in the real world.
[1] Early days: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-2_JFL5szJk4/To0Tl8nuP2I/AAAAAAAADq... [2] Jobs and the Mac: https://s3.amazonaws.com/hackedu/jobs1984.jpg
Those bow ties seem like the hoodies of the 80s.
So the "phychology hack" can work in both cases. Dressing yourself properly is a good default though.
I came across as "that young technical wizard" before I even opened my mouth. You should totally use those stereotypes to your advantage when you can.
I thought about adding my thoughts about not overdressing when you need to come across as technically proficient because of the stereotype but thought that would have muddled my point.
The next post will probably be about opening doors more effectively, like Kramer, to save a couple of seconds off the time spent opening doors each day.
I bet we have to face hundreds if not thousands of those trivial decisions each day and most arent reoccurring all the time so you cant automate them...
I watch my daughters when they go to a local candy store, and they savor making their choices. They literally have hundreds of different items to choose from.
When I'm getting ready in the morning, I tend to be focused on the important things. In my case, as a stay-at-home dad, the important things tend to be plans for teaching my son and helping him with his disability. I've arranged the rest of my morning to be as automatic as possible so I don't have to think about what clothes to wear or what to have for breakfast.
Incidentally, my son and I were just walking around with buckets on our heads pretending to be robots. Counting robots, not production robots :)
Humanity FAIL. As if you have some very crucial things to decide on the 15 minutes you spend waking up, dressing, shaving and such...
What "context switch"? You are not an OS, and you are not even fully awake, heck you're not even awake before coffee, much less just after you woke up.
I'm a stay-at-home dad. I very often wake up thinking about how to approach my son's disability, and I'm glad that I don't have to deal with interruptions to my thought process for something as pointless as "which shirt should I wear today". I just pull the top shirt off the pile and keep thinking about my son.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some very important playing-with-blocks to do. Humanity WIN.
Sorry, but "stay at home dads" don't get to be interrupted by clothing choices anyway. It's not like the public is gonna see what you are wearing. Why even wear a shirt? Pyjamas would be equally OK. So you're not the kind of person I wrote my comment for (the same way the advice of wearing the same shirt every day would be totally worthless for a fashion model).
That said, all health to you and your son, man.
But even if I wasn't a stay-at-home dad, the same argument holds: some people are thinking about important things in the morning. Maybe you're not; maybe you walk around like a zombie until your second cup of coffee. But some people focus in the morning, and for those people, "automate unimportant decisions" is one strategy to let them stay focused on whatever important thing it is they're thinking about.
(I wasn't always a stay-at-home dad.)
Still, not the typical subject of the original post.
Outliers need not apply.
I've got enough trivial decisions & distractions to deal with. Reducing them is becoming paramount as my schedule, and mind, and life, become ever more crammed with stretches.
I'm seriously thinking of emptying the entire closet and refilling it with matched outfits kept that way. Not going so far as the same thing every day, but there are nice sets which should be in an organized grab-and-go arrangement.
Why don't we just say what it really is - "I can't be bothered to spend time picking out what to wear".
And there's really nothing wrong with that either. Fashion is a priority for some, and for others, not at all.
What I don't get is why this choice needs to be characterized as a life hack or optimization.
Let's be realistic: getting dressed is not cognitively draining. Most of us rarely have to dress out of our comfort zone. Get yourself some "go to" outfits that are business-casual and semi-formal, so when the rare time comes when you have to "dress up" (what is that, four times a year?) you know what you're wearing. Other than that, it's jeans and t-shirts. When they all fit, you don't have to worry about what you happen to pick that day. I've never spent 15 minutes choosing what to wear in my life, and yet I've never been compelled to wear the same outfit on consecutive days.
Personally I think it's a bit over the top to optimise this much but it would save more than just 10 seconds a day.
At least our girls get it :-)
Once there was a man named Mr. Artesian and his activity was tremendous, And he grudged every minute away from his desk because the importance of his work was so stupendous;
And he had one object all sublime, Which was to save simply oodles of time.
He figured that sleeping eight hours a night meant that if he lived to be seventy-five he would have spent twenty-five years not at his desk but in bed, So he cut his slumber to six hours which meant he only lost eighteen years and nine months instead,
And he figured that taking ten minutes for breakfast and twenty minutes for luncheon and half an hour for dinner meant that he spent three years, two months and fifteen days at the table, So that by subsisting solely on bouillon cubes which he swallowed at his desk to save this entire period he was able,
And he figured that at ten minutes a day he spent a little over six months and ten days shaving, So he grew a beard, which gave him a considerable saving,
And you might think that now he might have been satisfied, but no, he wore a thoughtful frown, Because he figured that at two minutes a day he would spend thirty-eight days and a few minutes in elevators just travelling up and down,
So as a final time saving device he stepped out the window of his office, which happened to be on the fiftieth floor, And one of his partners asked "Has he vertigo?" and the other glanced out and down and said "Oh no, only about ten feet more."
The following is a vignette from a series of vignettes on improv by Billy Merritt:
[THUMP, THUMP, CRASH] The closet door explodes outward and inside the closet there is a 6 foot worm standing upright. It is green with bits of moist hair all over the body. The head of the worm has two giant eyes that always seems to be crying, and pinchers for a mouth. It makes a noise that is a cross between a hiss and a donkey bray.
Creature: What the fuck is that?!?!
MASTER: That is my worm.
Creature: Your what?
MASTER: My worm. We all have them.
Creature: I'm pretty sure I don't have a worm. I think I would know if I had something like that.
MASTER: Yours may not be as big, but you definitely have one, I can tell.
Crerature: How can you tell I have something like that? Is it inside me? Will it kill me? Jesus, get it out of me!
MASTER: EASY. Once you become an improviser, once you feel you have it down enough that you can improvise with anyone at any time. A worm develops inside you.
Creature: You mean once I finally get it, I get this, this worm inside me. I don't want that, it's disgusting.
[the worm weeps a little louder]
MASTER: The worm is all your bad habits. All the rules you break in order to make a scene work. It feeds off of your bad habits it lives off of denials and bad object work.
Creature: Well then don't you want to kill the worm. Your worm is so big.
MASTER: Thank you. You can't kill the worm, just like you can't eliminate all bad habits. Sometimes you have to break the rules in order to further the scene and go where you never thought you could. You must except your worm, you have a symbiotic relationship with it.
Creature: How do you know when you have a worm?
MASTER: You will know. It will speak to you. You will find yourself doing a scene and you will realize that what you are doing is wrong, then a little voice will say "do it, see what happens" , that is the worm.
Creature: Should I always listen to my worm?
MASTER: No, if you feed it too much it will consume you. You need to develop a relationship with your worm, know your worm, know when to let your worm out to play, and also know when to keep your worm inside.
Creature: Why is your worm so big?
MASTER: I'm a level 37 improviser, a shaft of light, My worm has grown along with me. But I still have to control it, make sure it doesn't get out of hand, or out of the closet.
Creature: What happens if you lose your worm, or if it dies.
MASTER: Then you become a improrobot, making automatic responses, and doing automatic scenes. You run a risk of losing your creativity, your life force. You lose the truth.
Creature: So I must embrace my worm.
MASTER: Yes. Would you like to touch my worm?
Creature: No.
WORM: HSSSSSSSEEEOOOORRRRRRWWWWWWW.
- http://www.improvresourcecenter.com/mb/showthread.php?s=51a2...
I don't think it's anyone's place to say what your worm is and what it isn't, only you know, but I think it's interesting to think about.
If you hire Issey Miyake to make a custom turtleneck, then you are making a fashion statement. Also, he wore black for a reason - it's a sophisticated, serious, and confident color (or lack thereof) - which was a fashion statement.
If I recall correctly that's not true. He actually asked a Japanese designer to create a uniform for Apple employees. The employees didn't like the idea so Jobs decided if they wouldn't have one he would anyway and got the turtleneck designed.
As for the advertising, I think a well-dressed young(ish? -- the assumption being younger, single people are more likely to use Grouper) person engaging with potential customers in casual conversation at the popular coffee shops and lunch hangouts in your area would go a good deal further than schlepping to work in the same shirt each day. However, I haven't lived in New York and perhaps the people there are less open to casual conversation.
If you asked me now though, I'd say that aside from appeasing societal norms, there's no point in changing your outer shell incessantly. Clothes don't really get that dirty after a day or two of normal wear, and changing them all the time seems pointless to me. While some people may brand this as unhygienic, I respectfully disagree. I also don't care if other people want to change their clothes every day, I just don't care to do it myself.
That said, there was a lot more to Steve Jobs than his clothing and habits. I don't suggest anybody change their behavior to emulate him, especially on what I consider a weak argument. If you want to wear the same shirt every day, do it for your own reasons, not because of some conjecture you have on what statement Jobs was trying to make.
As for what to wear, if you're in a startup you should wear your logo as much as possible; asshole or not.
Pro tip for people who have trouble finding matching socks in the morning:
1. Donate all your socks to charity
2. Buy a single pair of socks you really like many times
As soon as the current set starts to show wear (holes, ripping out when putting them on), I demote all the socks in that set to cleaning rags and buy a dozen or so new pairs, all exactly alike.
I don't think it's especially wasteful -- assuming the socks are chosen at random they should all be about equally worn, and I do recycle the old ones for cleaning, shoe polishing, and so on. They're actually great for that, especially if you turn them inside out so the rough texture is on the outside.
To each their own I guess. I don't begrudge you for wearing your own company's shirt every day. But let's be honest - it's 100% advertising, and 0% optimization.
Personally, I think staring at my reflection all day long is a bit vain, but of course, to each their own.
I started doing this shortly after that post, although I'd been thinking about it for longer. I have to say, my decision had nothing to do with saving time or context switching or Steve Jobs (even though what I picked, black t-shirts and jeans, is evocative of Jobs).
I made this decision because thinking about what to wear has always involved a little anxiety for me. I grew up never wearing the right thing, and was bullied and taunted a little bit for it, along with the usual things nerds are tormented about. Even though I'm no longer a socially outcast geek in high school, thinking about what to wear and how to dress gave me discomfort. Now it doesn't. I bet a lot of people who decide to go this route have similar feelings, of varying degrees.
I'm sure this won't last forever, and as I get older or work in a different, less forgiving company, I may need to adapt my "uniform" to be a bit more formal, but I really think people shouldn't take it so seriously here. Obviously if you're selling your startup every day, you might want to think about what you wear, although the OPs approach of wearing a branded t-shirt doesn't seem terrible.
But in general, we're hackers, we should be judging each other by our skills, not what we wear.
On the other hand, wearing the same thing everyday does save time and brain effort. I wear the same thing everyday and have done so for about two years. Technically my shirts are different, but I have narrowed down my options considerably. I own five pairs of the same pants(outlier; black). I have twelve button up shirts in plain colors (four are white, four are blue, two are grey, two are green). I either wear a NAU blazer or a black light jacket. I have three of the same sneakers and one pair of dress of shoes.
Everyday I wake up grab a pair of pants and a shirt. Depending on the weather, I can grab a jacket or not.
I consider it a type of lifehack. I do not think it is for everyone. It really simplified that part of my life.
On the weekends I just grab a tshirt and a pair of jeans at random, just like teenagers that are uninterested in making fashion statements. Just like the college student with 4 tshirts and 1 jeans that doesn't care about what he's wearing. Just like I do on the weekdays with my more "serious" clothes.
ALSO, people you can't mock the turtleneck thing. Even the top secret spys do it. Tactical turtlenecks anyone?
I don't know why Jobs always dressed the same, but it could quite reasonably have been to "brand" his image. He was, after all, the front man image of Apple.
Jobs was famous for controlling every detail of his presentations, it's inconceivable that he would not extend this attention to his dress.
The comma there confuses me.
/pedantry (few threads seem more appropriate for it)
I don’t have to think about what to wear.
Free advertising.
Really? It says something about lack of imagination, that's for sure. Ironic that one would have to steal such a thought. Also, Advertising != modesty and lack of adornment. So this is sort of un-original and missing the point.
I guess if I tried to do a start-up, it would surely fail as I stare bleary eyed into my drawer of shirts, having just been distracted from the most important idea I've ever had.
It's simple, clean and standardized, but I can still look different everyday. I can pull an alternate when the time is appropriate and dress up nicer, like for a date. Most importantly it's unoffending to the eye.
A google/grouper/conference t-shirt is offending to the eye. I tend to have a whole lot of preconceived notions when I see someone wear those shirts, usually it's related to their lack of a social life.
Why talk about and wear a shirt for your startup and not even put a link to it? Nobody knows what your startup is, write for an audience that doesn't know you.
That's the catch - for the shirt to be effective as advertising, people who see it need to know what it is.
In the absence of any previous knowledge of the startup, most people would simply assume that "Grouper" is a clothing company, or has something to do with fish products.
This is my compromise.
Go to a freaking store and buy a bunch of t-shirts, you can get them for as little as $5 each, if money is an issue. Copying Jobs or the Google founders doesn't make you one of them, just makes you an ....