The Problem:

Deciding what to wear in the morning takes me a good amount of time. This style doesn’t just happen. It is planned.

Typically, it would take me about 30 minutes of sifting through my closet, finding something to wear, trying it on, taking it off, finding something else, then sifting through my closet more, and tyring something else on until I finally settled on what I actually wanted to wear for the day.

Some of you may be able to relate to this. I’ve tried picking out my clothes the night before and picking them out for the week on the weekend. But that just didn’t work for me.

The Soultion:

I finally, however, figured it out. I developed a work uniform. I work in an office so it is suit, slacks, and a button up pretty much every day. To reduce the amount of time I spent picking out my outfits I developed a uniform.

I have about 10 white shirts, 5 charcoal dress pants, and 3 charcoal suit jackets that are identical to each other.I also have a set of 5 light gray dress pants and 2 identical light gray suit jackets that match the pants. This gives me some variety when I want it.

Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg are notorious for always wearing the same thing. That’s not bad company to be in.

The Results:

The immediate result was that I now freed a lot of time in my mornings and life up for more important things. The second result is that I freed up my closet immensely. If you have a New York apartment, you know just how valuable each inch of closet space is.

Another prime benefit is that I am no longer spending money on new work clothes. I have what I wear and that’s all I need. There’s really no reason that I have to buy anymore clothes associated with work. Huge money saver righ there.

But I also feel more relaxed and refreshed every day. I attribute this to being able to reduce decision fatigue in my life.

Decision fatigue purports “the more choices you make throughout the day, the harder each one becomes for your brain, and eventually it looks for shortcuts, usually in either of two very different ways.” Those different ways usually end up being not caring or us being reckless.

You can read more about it from this Times Article.

If you are looking for a way to streamline your wardrobe and reduce your decision fatigue, it may be worth giving this a shot.