Daniel Radcliffe war the same thing every day (http://www.imdb.com/news/ni0051271/) in order to prevent paparazzi getting useful pictures of the ongoing filming of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
And David Attenborough has been wearing the same blue shirts for most of his career so that its possible to cut shots from different periods without people getting distracted by constant clothing changes.
The only thing in this article I could never subscribe to is this:
> Set “key objectives” before bed. I decide what I want to do BEFORE I go to sleep. This saves time in the morning when I want to jump right into doing focused work.
Going to sleep is my disconnect from the world. I do my best to let go of all worries or thoughts and embrace what an active brain really needs: shutting down for a while.
Making some decisions before going to bed helps reduce the time to mental shutdown once you're in bed.
If you go to sleep and know you have tasks the next day, you need to let go of them somehow. One way is to make those decisions now, have a plan or a list of things that will be done tomorrow (even if it's just basic). For instance, look at the calendar and see that you have an 8am appointment the next day. Better to know before going to bed than to realize it as you're halfway asleep and suddenly jolted awake by the memory.
If you don't plan at night, then it helps if you have a morning routine. By running on autopilot for the first 30 minutes, it will likely provide time to plan your day in the morning. But the bigger point is to plan your day every day.
I wonder if aggregating your decisions during a planning session draws less from your daily will power budget than if you made those same decisions throughout the day. Maybe that is a reason to do a planning session closer to bedtime, assuming sleep acts as a reset.
The author might not be suggesting that you make decisions immediately before going to sleep, but rather suggesting you make certain decisions about the next morning some time before you lay down.
On the other hand, I have a strong morning routine that is largely driven from previous night preparation, and it doesn't bother my ability to sleep at all doing some minor decision-centric preparations right before bed.
I didn't set out to do this, but I wear effectively the same thing every day (jeans, button-up, topsiders, north face). The biggest choice in getting dressed is which socks I'll wear, but that's fun.
I love variety in my food, and cooking is my "relaxation" time every day. I would (and do) get depressed eating even the same thing for lunch every day. Similarly, I like wandering the aisles for the grocery story (when I go—my wife does most of the shopping) to find interesting ingredients that inspire food ideas.
Don't most people do this? Especially the kind of people here on Hacker News? I have like 10 plaid shirts, and 4 pairs of dark blue jeans and every day i pick one of each and wear it. The big advantage of my system is that I don't look like a weirdo because I wear an identical outfit every day.
I have lots of shirts and pants but just take from the bottom of the pile, put back on the top of the pile. Or left of the closet, put back on the right of the closet. I don't look like I have only one outfit but never obsess over what to wear.
It also sounds kind of silly as decisions take only as much brain power as you put into them. Does Zuck eat only one kind of food ever? (otherwise he'd have to choose :O). Does he only have one of everything? Seems unlikely...
It seems much more likely to concern having a signature look (aka Jobs) and to minimize paparazzi since all the pictures look the same and are therefore less valuable.
Yeah, same here. Just don't care which shirt I pick out, but have some number of different ones. I don't buy that having only identical clothes really makes a big difference here, but maybe for some people?
This is a good summary. If grabbing a shirt and a pair of pants that somewhat go together requires too much brainpower to do on a daily basis, maybe you don't have much to begin with.
I especially like this part:
Eat the same few meals. This is in part due to decision fatigue, but it’s also a powerful dieting tool. For example, Tim Ferris’s Slow Carb Diet suggests eating the same few meals to boost adherence.
Yes, it's also very unhealthy to have a one-sided diet. That's why you're losing weight, your missing our on the nutrients a balanced diet offers.
Men can reduce their decision making without attracting attention as the person who always wears the same clothing.
* Pick a color palette for your shirts. Four is enough. Buy multiples of those.
* Get khakis and jeans. Multiples, again.
All of your shirts will go with all of your pants. In the winter, wear jeans. In the summer, wear khakis. When you decide to cross over, put the other ones away.
Women, however, seem to have much more pressure to consider fashion. Sorry; it's a societal construct. If you don't feel bad about it, exactly the same choices can work for you: pick a blouse in four colors, pick comfortable pants and jeans, be done with it.
> Women, however, seem to have much more pressure to consider fashion.
As an MtF trans person, the blandness and lack of choice available in male clothing, especially professional male clothing, always felt like a straightjacket to me. The lack of options drove me up a wall, and I was either unenthused about or actively repulsed by the few options that were available. I think I ended up wearing a polo shirt and cargo pants most days, just because I couldn't muster up the effort to give a shit.
Before I transitioned, I crossdressed in private just so I could wear something that I actually liked, even if it was just by myself in my house. Unfortunately, that actually delayed my accepting I was trans... for years, I told myself I was "just a crossdresser" because I thought "Well duh, who doesn't prefer women's clothes over men's? Of course every guy wants to be a girl because being a girl is just obviously better." Of course, that turned out to be a bunch of bupkiss, and cis guys just don't think that way, but it took me so many years to realize that.
I didn't start giving a shit about how I looked in public until I transitioned. Finally, I could wear things that I thought looked good, and I actually had meaningful options.
Well... this is a thread about reducing options in order to not make decisions. Men actually have lots of options, but are frequently limited by the same social pressures that cause women to have to make more choices.
For example: a UtiliKilt, or actual kilt. Bermuda shorts. A sarong or laplap -- that will cause comment in most of the US, but is perfectly normal in much of the Asian Pacific. A guayabera or a Hawaiian print shirt; vests and sweaters and cardigans and jackets.
Your point about "professional male clothing" is very well-taken, though. Women have many more options.
I also do this. I rotate a few different styles of jeans but always buy the same ones. I have 20 of a specific black t-shirt and wear the same hoodie. I mix it up a bit with my shoes though.
I used to do this for years, just because I realized it didn’t matter (to me). It drove my colleagues nuts though and they tried to pressure me into “changing my shirt” or making fun of me because I could care less about wearing jeans on Friday. I told them I took a shower once a month whether I needed it or not, so let me be.
Anyway, I no longer do it because I just grew tired of the same look, but I have been considering going back because I found the plain white shirts I used to wear turned out to be very high quality and lasted forever. I can’t seem to find a variety of colored shirts with the same longevity. It seems the mix of cotton/polyester and weave is different depending on the color die, but the white shirts with a 60/40 (cotton/poly) were really a good deal in the long run. Coincidentally, I’m wearing one right now :).
We can't really tell because our industry is so messed up wrt personal optimization and unhealthy work practices that showering once every two month sounds kinda probable.
Or sarcasm... Or mind your own business type of answer, you know?
Also, do you know showering too often destroy your skin bacteria and oil and that those exist for a reason?
Alternative opinion: the character trait not talked about is focus & drive. Obama is focused on doing his job the best way he thinks possible. So is Zuck. That means they don't have time for playing the "what should we eat tonight?" game with their SOs. And they simply don't care what they wear.
I'm aware of studies suggesting a set amount of decisions each day and that does make sense. However I don't think removing the choice of what you're wearing (and other menial decisions) measurably impacts your performance. It's a symptom of your ambition and drive for efficiency.
I recently went to a startup weekend. A group of young men started wearing the same shirts each day after reading the Zuck story. I think that is missing the point entirely.
>> “I’m trying to pare down decisions. I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make.”
"Each decision makes us less creative, less in control and less focused."
Sounds hip but it's also ridiculous. Each morning I select a necktie from an array of choices. That's not making me less "focused" later on.
So Obama and Zuckerburg don't want to decide what to wear because they don't like making that decision. That's understandable and fine. But it doesn't mean that someone who does make that decision every day (because he actually likes to) has somehow depleted his limited reservoir of decision-making ability.
There are different levels of decision making. It's one thing to have analysis paralysis and spend an hour pondering some trivial decision. It's another thing to spend 30 seconds grabbing clothes to wear out of a closet or drawer--which is how I suspect most men at least get dressed on the average morning even if they don't wear the same thing every day.
I agree. I think there are choices that wear me down and take away from other, more important choices... But picking my shirt in the morning isn't one of them.
That said, I do wear the same pants and shoes daily, so it's really just the shirt that I'm picking. If I had to pick a whole outfit, I think it'd become a burden pretty quickly. I've kept the decision manageable and fun, without coming off as a weirdo to my coworkers.
I also have the feeling, if I'm styled up and wear stuff I like, I feel more creative, because I'm not so self-conscious anymore.
But I could imagine, if I was as rich as obama or zuckerberg, I could hire someone who learns what I like and make food and clothing choices for me. So I could preventing "spending" creativity AND feel comfy.
I think it comes down to whether or not picking out clothes makes you happier or not.
Similar debate with Soylent. I think a lot of us are just dumbfounded that picking out and eating tasty food is one of the things some people want to give up to have more time and emotional energy for other things. For me, getting to go outside and pick between one of several decent places to eat is one of the things that adds a little bit of happiness to my day, and being pressured to give that up so I can stay at work longer and give even more of my emotional and mental energy to my employer than I do already, seems just mean, small minded and short sighted.
Probably not a coincidence the examples from the articles are all people who have a lot of autonomy and authority in their work life.
I really doubt it's about choice and willpower. It's about giving out a constant image as a public icon.
Everyone knows Zukerberg wears grey shirts. Everyone knew that Steve Jobs wore black turtle neck. If they were to change their looks, there would be news articles about it. It would make a lot of noise for nothing.
This is the relevant excerpt from Isaacson's biography:
>> On a trip to Japan in the early 1980s, Jobs asked Sony's chairman Akio Morita why everyone in the company's factories wore uniforms. He told Jobs that after the war, no one had any clothes, and companies like Sony had to give their workers something to wear each day. Over the years, the uniforms developed their own signatures styles, especially at companies such as Sony, and it became a way of bonding workers to the company. "I decided that I wanted that type of bonding for Apple," Jobs recalled.
>> Sony, with its appreciation for style, had gotten the famous designer Issey Miyake to create its uniform. It was a jacket made of rip-stop nylon with sleeves that could unzip to make it a vest. So Jobs called Issey Miyake and asked him to design a vest for Apple, Jobs recalled, "I came back with some samples and told everyone it would great if we would all wear these vests. Oh man, did I get booed off the stage. Everybody hated the idea."
>> In the process, however, he became friends with Miyake and would visit him regularly. He also came to like the idea of having a uniform for himself, both because of its daily convenience (the rationale he claimed) and its ability to convey a signature style. "So I asked Issey to make me some of his black turtlenecks that I liked, and he made me like a hundred of them." Jobs noticed my surprise when he told this story, so he showed them stacked up in the closet. "That's what I wear," he said. "I have enough to last for the rest of my life."
I really doubt it's about choice and willpower. It's about giving out a constant image as a public icon. Everyone know's Zukerberg wears gray shirts. Everyone knew that Steve Jobs wore black turtle neck. If they were to change their looks, there would be news articles about it. It would make a lot of noise for nothing.
I can't speak to the motive behind why Zuck actually does this, but I can applaud the fallout if this gains traction. No more being held prisoner by the fashion houses. I once attended a school that made us wear the same thing everyday (cleaned multiple sets). Two days a week we got to switch to Kaki color or whatever. I loved it.
The author's argument about willpower and the limited capacity for choice is definitely true, but I'd like to push back a little and point out that if you let yourself get into it, clothes can be fun. Your outfits can be an opportunity to express your personality and creativity, even if only in small ways. I get a lot of pleasure from dressing in a way that I think looks good and feels "right" to me, and if you're not familiar with that feeling, you may want to experiment a little and see if it has a positive effect on your life.
For people like presidents, it's that they can be easily photoshopped in order to make more flattering pictures, or even completely fake pictures. In fact, you don't even need photoshop, Soviet leaders used this trick constantly.
I wear one of the same few models of black shirt (I have 5-10 each of a tshirt, a sweater, and a polo) and one of the same few models of jeans every day (I have one or two each of those).
For me, it's less about the decision making process than it is about feeling confident in what I wear. Before I started building a more uniform-like wardrobe, I had anxiety about whether I looked good, whether my clothes fit well, whether what I was wearing matched. I found that I felt more confident in black.
Now, I know I look good (or at least I feel that I do), and I'm never concerned. Sure, it can at times be tiresome to have the "yes, I wear this all the time" conversation, but for me the tradeoff is worth it: I have zero anxiety in the morning and confidence all day.
Wasn't the whole thing about "willpower depletion" shown to be an exaggeration some time ago?
Oh by the way, I do want to chose. Because there are some days where I want to dress down, some days up, because I do have stuff after work to attend (sometimes). Some days are cold, some are hot (and I don't take an air-conditioned car from an air-conditioned house to an air-conditioned office)
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 147 ms ] threadhttp://www.hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?/archives/286-No-...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LX85aiYXsM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktYrYErBN-0&t=27m25s
> Set “key objectives” before bed. I decide what I want to do BEFORE I go to sleep. This saves time in the morning when I want to jump right into doing focused work.
Going to sleep is my disconnect from the world. I do my best to let go of all worries or thoughts and embrace what an active brain really needs: shutting down for a while.
If you go to sleep and know you have tasks the next day, you need to let go of them somehow. One way is to make those decisions now, have a plan or a list of things that will be done tomorrow (even if it's just basic). For instance, look at the calendar and see that you have an 8am appointment the next day. Better to know before going to bed than to realize it as you're halfway asleep and suddenly jolted awake by the memory.
I wonder if aggregating your decisions during a planning session draws less from your daily will power budget than if you made those same decisions throughout the day. Maybe that is a reason to do a planning session closer to bedtime, assuming sleep acts as a reset.
On the other hand, I have a strong morning routine that is largely driven from previous night preparation, and it doesn't bother my ability to sleep at all doing some minor decision-centric preparations right before bed.
I love variety in my food, and cooking is my "relaxation" time every day. I would (and do) get depressed eating even the same thing for lunch every day. Similarly, I like wandering the aisles for the grocery story (when I go—my wife does most of the shopping) to find interesting ingredients that inspire food ideas.
It also sounds kind of silly as decisions take only as much brain power as you put into them. Does Zuck eat only one kind of food ever? (otherwise he'd have to choose :O). Does he only have one of everything? Seems unlikely...
It seems much more likely to concern having a signature look (aka Jobs) and to minimize paparazzi since all the pictures look the same and are therefore less valuable.
I especially like this part:
Eat the same few meals. This is in part due to decision fatigue, but it’s also a powerful dieting tool. For example, Tim Ferris’s Slow Carb Diet suggests eating the same few meals to boost adherence.
Yes, it's also very unhealthy to have a one-sided diet. That's why you're losing weight, your missing our on the nutrients a balanced diet offers.
* Pick a color palette for your shirts. Four is enough. Buy multiples of those.
* Get khakis and jeans. Multiples, again.
All of your shirts will go with all of your pants. In the winter, wear jeans. In the summer, wear khakis. When you decide to cross over, put the other ones away.
Women, however, seem to have much more pressure to consider fashion. Sorry; it's a societal construct. If you don't feel bad about it, exactly the same choices can work for you: pick a blouse in four colors, pick comfortable pants and jeans, be done with it.
Have you seen the photos of perfect six packs abdomen on underwear packaging ? Men are slowly getting into the same situation as women.
Of course it's easier to not care at all about all of this when you are a billionaire.
As an MtF trans person, the blandness and lack of choice available in male clothing, especially professional male clothing, always felt like a straightjacket to me. The lack of options drove me up a wall, and I was either unenthused about or actively repulsed by the few options that were available. I think I ended up wearing a polo shirt and cargo pants most days, just because I couldn't muster up the effort to give a shit.
Before I transitioned, I crossdressed in private just so I could wear something that I actually liked, even if it was just by myself in my house. Unfortunately, that actually delayed my accepting I was trans... for years, I told myself I was "just a crossdresser" because I thought "Well duh, who doesn't prefer women's clothes over men's? Of course every guy wants to be a girl because being a girl is just obviously better." Of course, that turned out to be a bunch of bupkiss, and cis guys just don't think that way, but it took me so many years to realize that.
I didn't start giving a shit about how I looked in public until I transitioned. Finally, I could wear things that I thought looked good, and I actually had meaningful options.
For example: a UtiliKilt, or actual kilt. Bermuda shorts. A sarong or laplap -- that will cause comment in most of the US, but is perfectly normal in much of the Asian Pacific. A guayabera or a Hawaiian print shirt; vests and sweaters and cardigans and jackets.
Your point about "professional male clothing" is very well-taken, though. Women have many more options.
I'd guess the effects of the use of will power can be additive or compounded, like choosing not to have to choose clothes.
Anyway, I no longer do it because I just grew tired of the same look, but I have been considering going back because I found the plain white shirts I used to wear turned out to be very high quality and lasted forever. I can’t seem to find a variety of colored shirts with the same longevity. It seems the mix of cotton/polyester and weave is different depending on the color die, but the white shirts with a 60/40 (cotton/poly) were really a good deal in the long run. Coincidentally, I’m wearing one right now :).
That is disgusting.
(I'm kidding of course, just in case anyone else is offended by my lame attempt at humor)
is this a typo?
I'm aware of studies suggesting a set amount of decisions each day and that does make sense. However I don't think removing the choice of what you're wearing (and other menial decisions) measurably impacts your performance. It's a symptom of your ambition and drive for efficiency.
I recently went to a startup weekend. A group of young men started wearing the same shirts each day after reading the Zuck story. I think that is missing the point entirely.
> Here’s Obama in a Vanity Fair article:
>> “I’m trying to pare down decisions. I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make.”
The article goes into detail on how to setup a full-blown plan of cutting down decision count. I think they missed the point entirely.
"Our daily willpower is limited"
Sounds hip but it's also ridiculous. Each morning I select a necktie from an array of choices. That's not making me less "focused" later on.
So Obama and Zuckerburg don't want to decide what to wear because they don't like making that decision. That's understandable and fine. But it doesn't mean that someone who does make that decision every day (because he actually likes to) has somehow depleted his limited reservoir of decision-making ability.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision_fatigue
That said, I do wear the same pants and shoes daily, so it's really just the shirt that I'm picking. If I had to pick a whole outfit, I think it'd become a burden pretty quickly. I've kept the decision manageable and fun, without coming off as a weirdo to my coworkers.
But I could imagine, if I was as rich as obama or zuckerberg, I could hire someone who learns what I like and make food and clothing choices for me. So I could preventing "spending" creativity AND feel comfy.
Similar debate with Soylent. I think a lot of us are just dumbfounded that picking out and eating tasty food is one of the things some people want to give up to have more time and emotional energy for other things. For me, getting to go outside and pick between one of several decent places to eat is one of the things that adds a little bit of happiness to my day, and being pressured to give that up so I can stay at work longer and give even more of my emotional and mental energy to my employer than I do already, seems just mean, small minded and short sighted.
Probably not a coincidence the examples from the articles are all people who have a lot of autonomy and authority in their work life.
Everyone knows Zukerberg wears grey shirts. Everyone knew that Steve Jobs wore black turtle neck. If they were to change their looks, there would be news articles about it. It would make a lot of noise for nothing.
It's an uniform. They wear it to work.
>> On a trip to Japan in the early 1980s, Jobs asked Sony's chairman Akio Morita why everyone in the company's factories wore uniforms. He told Jobs that after the war, no one had any clothes, and companies like Sony had to give their workers something to wear each day. Over the years, the uniforms developed their own signatures styles, especially at companies such as Sony, and it became a way of bonding workers to the company. "I decided that I wanted that type of bonding for Apple," Jobs recalled.
>> Sony, with its appreciation for style, had gotten the famous designer Issey Miyake to create its uniform. It was a jacket made of rip-stop nylon with sleeves that could unzip to make it a vest. So Jobs called Issey Miyake and asked him to design a vest for Apple, Jobs recalled, "I came back with some samples and told everyone it would great if we would all wear these vests. Oh man, did I get booed off the stage. Everybody hated the idea."
>> In the process, however, he became friends with Miyake and would visit him regularly. He also came to like the idea of having a uniform for himself, both because of its daily convenience (the rationale he claimed) and its ability to convey a signature style. "So I asked Issey to make me some of his black turtlenecks that I liked, and he made me like a hundred of them." Jobs noticed my surprise when he told this story, so he showed them stacked up in the closet. "That's what I wear," he said. "I have enough to last for the rest of my life."
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3101265
It's an uniform. They wear it to work.
For me, it's less about the decision making process than it is about feeling confident in what I wear. Before I started building a more uniform-like wardrobe, I had anxiety about whether I looked good, whether my clothes fit well, whether what I was wearing matched. I found that I felt more confident in black.
Now, I know I look good (or at least I feel that I do), and I'm never concerned. Sure, it can at times be tiresome to have the "yes, I wear this all the time" conversation, but for me the tradeoff is worth it: I have zero anxiety in the morning and confidence all day.
Oh by the way, I do want to chose. Because there are some days where I want to dress down, some days up, because I do have stuff after work to attend (sometimes). Some days are cold, some are hot (and I don't take an air-conditioned car from an air-conditioned house to an air-conditioned office)
Same thing with having lunch.