Wearing a uniform

Steve Jobs is one of the best known people for wearing the same thing every day. He would present at Apple’s big keynote events and work every day in his iconic black turtleneck, jeans and New Balance sneakers.

Many others do favor or have favored a daily uniform.

In the startup world, you end up collecting t-shirts from other startups. It’s easy to default to wearing those free shirts from your favorite companies + jeans pretty much every day. That look has become such a part of the culture, that there are articles on the web making fun of it.

I love not thinking and grabbing a shirt from the top of the pile, putting on jeans and shoes and getting the day going.

Sticking to a routine in some parts of your life (like considering what to wear or what to eat for breakfast) lets you dedicate your energy to other parts of your life. Sheena Iyengar in her Ted Talk describes a survey she did that found that the average person makes 70 choices in a typical day. That’s a lot of cognitive overhead just to get through the day.

I had a good run with the dot-com shirts helping me avoid choice, but as I get older showing up everywhere in a t-shirt with some dot-com logo (even if its my dot-com) no longer seems appealing.

So, I’m trying a new daily uniform:

• A v-neck shirt in different solid colors (with no logo)
• Jeans
• Vans shoes

What do you think? Have you tried a daily uniform? Do you think the whole idea of wearing the same thing every day is ridiculous?