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Why I wear the same shirt every day

waxman.me

71–80 of 109 posts

Re: Why I wear the same shirt every day

#71

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.

Mr. Artesians's Conscientiousness by Ogden Nash 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 yea…

As I was reading the last bit I was thinking he made his office INTO an elevator. I think that would have been awesome.

Re: Why I wear the same shirt every day

#72

>I rep a Grouper t-shirt every, single day. The comma there confuses me.

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

Typically 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.

Re: Why I wear the same shirt every day

#73
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.

Re: Why I wear the same shirt every day

#74
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.

Re: Why I wear the same shirt every day

#75
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.

Re: Why I wear the same shirt every day

#76
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have found a shirt that fits me perfectly so I bought a couple more of these. As long as it's a good fit, you enjoy wearing it, people don't scratch their heads looking at you, why not wear the same thing all the time? 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 knowled…

> why not wear the same thing all the time? 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.

> 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.

Re: Why I wear the same shirt every day

#77
post #67
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have found a shirt that fits me perfectly so I bought a couple more of these. As long as it's a good fit, you enjoy wearing it, people don't scratch their heads looking at you, why not wear the same thing all the time? 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 knowled…

" why not wear the same thing all the time? " Most of your fashion cohorts are cartoon characters?

Or a Power Ranger.

Re: Why I wear the same shirt every day

#78
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: Why I wear the same shirt every day

#80

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…

Along these lines, Steve Jobs didn't wear his iconic turtle neck and jeans when he was just a startup. Markula impressed upon him early that if he didn't dress well, people wouldn't trust him. So steve Jobs wore suits. An bowties. And looked really nice.

[1] Early days: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-2_JFL5szJk4/To0Tl8nuP2I/AAAAAAAADq... [2] Jobs and the Mac: https://s3.amazonaws.com/hackedu/jobs1984.jpg

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