9 ms·
Why I wear the same shirt every day
- delambo 14y ago"[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.
- eckyptang 14y agoDoes that apply to my of $2 black Gildan cotton t shirts? :)
- dllthomas 14y agoThe choice of outfit, and the choice to always wear said outfit, are slightly different things. My reading is that the author intended the latter.
- bradddd 14y agoExactly. 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 14y agoI would be highly entertained if someone actually established a line of clothing catering to Steve Jobs wannabes.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- stevewillows 14y agoI 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 14y agoBusiness partner or personal partner?
- stevewillows 14y agoPersonal partner. She was right too.
- kristofferR 14y agoI'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.
- webjunkie 14y agoA no door policy as to not having to think about how to open the door and in which direction!
- hkmurakami 14y agoI guess HP was really onto something when they pioneered the no office doors policy.
- lotharbot 14y agoIt'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 14y agooh 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...
- greedo 14y agoMy definition of being rich is being able to spend an inordinate amount of time making these trivial decisions. 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.
- cstavish 14y agoSvbtle 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 14y agoAn invite-only network that you can apply to[1]. Those two things don't make sense together. [1]: https://svbtle.com/apply https://svbtle.com/apply
- freshhawk 14y agoYou 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.
- Cushman 14y agoHe's not doing this because he's Steve Jobs, he's doing it because he has a reason for doing it that Steve Jobs had first. Cue joke about "A system and method for dressing a human being." 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...
- stinos 14y ago"he has a reason for doing it that Steve Jobs had first" come on. He's an icon but lately people seem to get confused and sounding like he invented half of what the world is today. He did not invent the single shirt behaviour at all. Even my grand grand mother always told us she used to have a bunch of copies of here favourite skirt around, hand made and all, because it was so easy. And she lived already half a century before Jobs was even born.
- freshhawk 14y ago> he has a reason for doing it that Steve Jobs had first 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.
- ecaroth 14y agoso 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?
- k-mcgrady 14y ago>> "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 14y agoThese two claims are not in contradiction.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- donniezazen 14y agoIf 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.
- podperson 14y agoThere 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.
- dromidas 14y ago>I rep a Grouper t-shirt every, single day. The comma there confuses me.
- hamxiaoz 14y agohow about >I rep a Grouper t-shirt every, single, day.
- saraid216 14y agoIt is permissible to use commas to indicate a verbal pause.
- nollidge 14y agoTypically not for emphasis pauses, though, just for clause or item separation pauses. I find it disruptive to visual parsing when they're used this way because I don't expect it. It's becoming common to use sentence breaks ("Every. Single. Day.") to express things like that, but that bugs me since it implies a falling tone on each word. Personally I'd prefer ellipses ("every...single...day."), but that's not perfect either. Writing is always an approximation of speech.
- aggie 14y agoIt'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)
- unreal37 14y agoI 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.
- carlosaguayo 14y agoWithout 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 14y agoSlow news day, nothin else seemed to be of much mention....
- onetimeuse001 14y ago"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 ....
- suyash 14y agonice 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!
- fistofjohnwayne 14y ago"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.
- batista 14y agoBecause 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.
- shrub 14y agoWhy 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.
- geekam 14y agoI actually like the advice. The OP does not mention that one should not dress well but merely not wasting time to mix-n-match.
- mzahir 14y agoInspired 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.
- latortuga 14y ago"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 14y ago>> 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.
- pclark 14y agoWriting that blog post just removed any time saved from wearing the same shirt every day.
- orthecreedence 14y agoI 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.
- ctdonath 14y agohttp://artofmanliness.com/category/dress-grooming/ http://artofmanliness.com/category/dress-grooming/
- g123g 14y agoI 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.
- noonespecial 14y agoAlways 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.
- coliveira 14y agoDespite 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.
- juiceandjuice 14y agoI 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.
- jhuckestein 14y agoStrage 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
- simon 14y agoThrew the old socks away, but I have about a dozen pair of tan socks (all the same), a dozen pair of the same style in dark brown and half a dozen of black dress socks. I have zero desire to be stylish in the sock department, so this greatly simplifies my life.
- Turing_Machine 14y agoYep. 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.
- WalterBright 14y agoI 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.
- 001sky 14y agoThere 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.
- molbioguy 14y agoPersonally, 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.
- fumar 14y agoI 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.
- jcr 14y agoMaybe 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 14y agoKinda surprising to see this much negativity about this idea only three months after it was discussed before: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4084095 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.
- sp4rki 14y agoMy 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?