Have you ever thought about how much time you spend on choosing what to wear in the morning? Perhaps, it made you late to work or university more times than you can count.
Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg have something in common. And this time it has nothing to do with technology.
If you do a google image search you see Mark Zuckerberg wearing either a simple grey T-shirt or black hoodie. Can you recall Steve Jobs wearing a Hawaiian shirt? No, because he didn’t wear them at all. At least, publicly. All of us remember him as the guy with the jeans, black turtleneck and New Balance sneakers. Unlike most corporate executives, who wear suits and ties, Jobs was committed to his chosen uniform, like this:
Of course, he could afford to wear the most expensive clothes, even made of gold. Was it boredom? Maybe laziness and a lack of fashion sense could be one reason.
Someone at a public Facebook Q&A, asked Mark Zuckerberg the important question of why he wears the same grey t-shirt every day.
His answer:
“I really want to clear my life to make it so that I have to make as few decisions as possible about anything except how to best serve this community.”
No-one choose him for his fashion sense
Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg weren’t the only men who thought that deciding what to wear every day is too much work. There are other successful people who also decided to wear the same thing every day.
Let’s have a look at Albert Einstein. Einstein had a closet full of different versions of grey suit, white shirts, black ties, and shoes. He was renowned from his crazy hair as well.
It has been reported that he did it because he didn’t want to waste brainpower on choosing an outfit each morning. Now—decades later—Barack Obama does the same.
Michael Lewis wrote in a recent Vanity Fair article:
You also need to remove from your life the day-to-day problems that absorb most people for meaningful parts of their day. “You’ll see I wear only gray or blue suits,” [Obama] said. “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 next one worth to mention is Karl Lagerfeld. The head designer and creative director for Chanel has never been spotted without his black suit and a white collar.
Maybe it’s a PR weapon. According to William Arruda, a personal branding guru and author of Ditch. Dare. Do!, this practice can be part of personal branding. “They wear what they wear because that’s what they feel comfortable wearing,” he says. “When you wear something that just feels right, you are confident. And it is also great to have a trademark look. It makes you memorable and distinctive.” Dan Schwabel, founder of Millennial Branding and author of “Me 2.0.” says: ““Famous business people and politicians are known to be consistent with their wardrobe because it’s their brand identity”. However, it could also be a sign of genius.
According to psychologist Oliver Burkeman who has studied the habits of genius sticking to a very simple routine can help a mind focus on the more important issues.Basically it’s about out-sourcing the boring everyday decisions to your routine, so that all your cognitive energy can be spent on the important bits of the day.
Theoretically, wearing the same clothes every day, having the same thing for breakfast and leaving the house at exactly the same time every day could unleash huge cognitive powers.
Though it hasn’t worked for me so far.
Applause Journal 