
Why I wear the same shirt every day - waxman
http://waxman.me/why-to-wear-the-same-clothes-every-day
======
freshhawk
You aren't Steve Jobs.

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.

~~~
suyash
You aren't Steve Jobs.

\- So what, who says he can't emulate Steve Jobs?

~~~
suyash
I say it. People don't like emulations of other people, especially if the
"emulators" consider some superficial thing like this part of their success.

\- 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.

~~~
majormajor
This is cargo cultism. Aping dress habits isn't going to imbue you with the
attributes that led to success for Jobs.

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.

~~~
WayneDB
That wasn't the reason given though. He didn't say he did it _just because_
Steve Jobs did it. He said that he did it for the _same reason_ that Steve
Jobs did it...which is that he doesn't have to think about what to wear.

~~~
suyash
atlast someone got it, thanks WayneDB

------
kristofferR
I'd like to see a life so absurdly optimized for productivity that the maximum
10 seconds you save every morning by not having to decide what to wear is
worth even mentioning.

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.

~~~
lotharbot
It's not so much "saving 10 seconds" as it is "avoiding cognitive context
switching". If you happen to be thinking about something important, you don't
want to interrupt that thought process to look through your clothes and decide
what to wear, or what to have for breakfast, or which car to drive, or any
number of other trivial decisions. If you can replace those with automatic
non-decisions ("take the top shirt out of the drawer") then you can maintain
focus.

~~~
kayoone
oh lord..what about trying to be human for atleast some moments of the day
instead of behaving like a production robot ?

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...

~~~
lotharbot
We also choose to avoid making those sorts of decisions when we're focusing on
more important things, preferably putting them off for other times. For
example, it's common for coders to close their door, not check their e-mail,
etc. when they want to be "in the zone".

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 :)

------
delambo
"[on Steve Jobs] He wore that famous black mock turtleneck ... not to make a
fashion statement"

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.

~~~
bradddd
Exactly. To interpret that as a "now I have more time to deal with other
things" motive fails to acknowledge the fact that Jobs was one of the most
prolific critics of subtle details. If he truly had more important things to
care about than his wardrobe, he would have worn whatever he had any given
day. It may not be fashion, but he established a brand.

~~~
saraid216
I would be highly entertained if someone actually established a line of
clothing catering to Steve Jobs wannabes.

------
k-mcgrady
>> "He wore that famous black mock turtleneck, Levi’s, and New Balances not to
make a fashion statement, but almost for the complete opposite reason: so he
didn’t have to think about what to wear"

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.

~~~
sadga
These two claims are not in contradiction.

------
cstavish
Svbtle describes itself as an "invite-only network of people who strive to
produce great content." This post is hardly the product of any such striving.
Sure, it's a nice little tidbit, but Michael Waxman could have easily conveyed
the same message shy of 140 characters.

~~~
zmmz
An invite-only network that you can apply to[1]. Those two things don't make
sense together.

[1]: <https://svbtle.com/apply>

------
podperson
There aren't many things you read that actually change your life, but many
years ago I read _Days of Atonement_ by Walter Jon Williams, and the (asshole)
main character had a little motto about people who wear advertising on their
t-shirts (etc.) -- "assholes always advertise". To this day, I will think
twice about wearing anything that could be construed as advertising.

------
fistofjohnwayne
"Q: What do you call a man who dresses well? A: Grown-up."

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.

------
noonespecial
Always Jobs? Einstein often wore the same thing, even rumored to have several
copies of the same outfit. Cornel West has been regularly doing this for 40
years. Jobs was hardly unique, and certainly not first. The only thing Jobs
seemed to add is what he always did, elevate it to an obsessive compulsion.

------
orthecreedence
I wear the same clothes every day because I don't really interface with the
public that much and because I've been doing it since I was a little kid. I
got made fun of it a lot in school but sooner or later people came to accept
it. If you ask me now why I did it back then, I wouldn't know (or at least I
didn't think about it enough to think about "why," I just did it).

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.

------
carlosaguayo
Without any offense, how/why can a post like this make it to the #2 spot in
hacker news? I'd like the top #5 or top #3 entries in hacker news be for truly
relevant, worth either reading and studying news or entries no?

~~~
ImprovedSilence
Slow news day, nothin else seemed to be of much mention....

------
jhuckestein
Strage reaction here. I'd assume that the thought of dressing the same every
day has at least crossed most people's minds on HN. It's an engineer's (lazy
man's?) solution to a common problem. For me that problem has more to do with
clothes management and what to do when your favorite outfit isn't available
than with the paradox of choice.

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

~~~
Turing_Machine
Yep. I've been more or less this for years, although I have a white set and a
dark (black or navy blue) set.

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.

------
pclark
Writing that blog post just removed any time saved from wearing the same shirt
every day.

------
unreal37
I have a closet shelf full of jeans. I also have hangers full of short-sleeve
button-up work shirts. I don't do much thinking about getting dressed - I grab
a jean and grab a shirt, based on what color I feel like today.

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.

------
molbioguy
Personally, I've been doing this for the last 6 years and I love not having to
think about what to wear each morning. It's liberating not to have to think
about whether you wore the same thing too recently or whether a coworker will
be wearing the same outfit. Wearing the same clothes every day (i.e. clean
identical copies) seems to work well when the clothing is neutral and
professional. It works as a casual uniform, and uniforms are perfectly
acceptable as long as they are not required. Friends may comment at first, but
as long as it's not offensive, coworkers get used to it pretty quickly (in my
experience). And since few people at my organization do this, I become unique
by wearing non-unique clothing! So far, no detrimental effects -- of course,
I'm not trying to attract/impress potential friends with my style or
facilitate socializing, so maybe that's why it works for me.

------
jcr
Maybe the only reason why Steve Jobs wore a black turtle neck every day is
because without it, he'd never be able to use an Apple computer due to the
high gloss screen reflections?

Personally, I think staring at my reflection all day long is a bit vain, but
of course, to each their own.

------
spacemanaki
Kinda surprising to see this much negativity about this idea only three months
after it was discussed before: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4084095>
The comments there seem a bit less negative I think.

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.

------
fumar
I see no harm to wearing a logo to represent one's company everyday. I also do
not see any real value added. I understand that it can be advertisement. To me
that is a quiet a stretch, unless thousands of people see that logo daily.

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.

------
sp4rki
My solution to having to choose what to wear was very simple. When I got a
little extra cash I reinvented my wardrobe using slacks and shirts (3 suits
also, but that's for special occasions that require them). The trick was to
get clothes that mainly can be worn interchangeably. Now I just grab a pair of
slacks, a random shirt and I'm sure it'll look good because I spent the time
to actually analyze my wardrobe woes when buying all the clothes.

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?

------
WalterBright
I suspect all the time he saved by not having to think about what to wear he
more than spent in thinking about how to justify wearing the same thing all
the time, and writing blog posts about it, etc.

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.

------
dromidas
>I rep a Grouper t-shirt every, single day.

The comma there confuses me.

~~~
saraid216
It is permissible to use commas to indicate a verbal pause.

~~~
aggie
It's not good writing. There is no authority on language, so "permissible" has
nothing to do with it. Writing guidelines are drawn from what makes the
communication effective and pleasing to the reader; often this amounts to
"everyone else does it this way," which is where the "rules" you learn in
elementary school come from. That said, misuse of commas can be very
distracting as they can convey a variety of syntactical operations which
readers must parse. They are the most distracting punctuation when used in an
unexpected manner. In this case the author would do better to use "Every.
Single. Day."

/pedantry (few threads seem more appropriate for it)

------
001sky
_There are two reasons why I do this:

    
    
            I don’t have to think about what to wear.
            Free advertising.
    

The first reason I stole from Steve Jobs_

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.

------
shrub
Why I don't wear the same shirt everyday: I think shopping for clothes is fun.
I'm not awake enough in the morning to do anything but pick out clothes. My
company doesn't have branded T-Shirts?

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.

------
coliveira
Despite being a great business person, many of Steve Job ideas were just plain
stupid (like for most other human beings). What is funny as that people seem
to think in hindsight that even his stupid ideas are great. Don't be a victim
of this disease: there is no good reason for wearing the same cloths every
day, whatever somebody else have told you.

------
mzahir
Inspired by Sony, Jobs created a uniform for Apple employees (to bond them)
but the idea was poorly received and thereby, scrapped. He ended up wearing
the uniforms, which 'grew' on him. Even though he later justified his uniform
as convenience, their primary intent wasn't to free up his cognitive cycles
for Apple.

------
g123g
I have got an idea from this discussion. What about an app which suggests what
to wear on a given day? You somehow scan all your clothes into it and then it
decides based on the weather, what you wore yesterday, your schedule etc. what
is the best fit for the day.

------
juiceandjuice
I wear mostly the same clothes every day. I have a bunch of plain t-shirts in
various colors (mostly shades of gray, but colors too), a few band t-shirts I
wear occasionally. 4 slightly different colored pairs of levis, and either
navy/red or black/blue shoes. Other than that, a black hoodie and a denim
jacket over that if the weather is cool (usually at night). I've got a bunch
of button up t-shirts I'll wear for a night out and occasionally at work.

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.

------
ecaroth
so if there are any similarities in your "personal brand" and your company's
brand, I can assume that you lack creativity, are hesitant to try new design
and features, and that your look/feel will soon stagnate?

------
latortuga
"Startups are hard. Every little bit helps."

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.

~~~
slantyyz
>> Nobody knows what your startup is,

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.

------
donniezazen
If it comes naturally to you then it works for you. Otherwise, you spend same
amount of thinking time, every morning, that you have to wear same shirt to
save time or promote.

------
stevewillows
I have several dress shirts that all go well with an arsenal of sweaters -- I
did the same shirt every day for a few years, but my partner insisted I switch
it up.

This is my compromise.

~~~
theorique
Business partner or personal partner?

~~~
stevewillows
Personal partner. She was right too.

------
ctdonath
<http://artofmanliness.com/category/dress-grooming/>

------
geekam
I actually like the advice. The OP does not mention that one should not dress
well but merely not wasting time to mix-n-match.

------
suyash
nice idea but why not mix it with other stuff..your company hat, watch, tie,
jeans etc etc...laptop sticker...so one way or the other you convey the
message and look good and feel good too!

------
batista
Because of some misguided idea that picking a shirt to wear takes too long off
of your morning? Hint: unless you're Lady Gaga, it does not.

------
onetimeuse001
_"The first reason I stole from Steve Jobs. "...The second reason was inspired
by Larry and Sergey._

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 ....

