I Wore the Same Outfit for 1 year and Here is What I’ve Learned

It started 365 days ago when I was maintaining a full-time job at Jeeon, a part-time job at Digitruck and another contractual job offered by Lex, who is a professor at Columbia University.

At Jeeon, I was doing a software engineering job, at digitruck, I was leading a team and taking care of their software infrastructure by doing the devOps related tasks and with Lex, I was helping him in his research on arsenic detection in Tube-wells, by developing some software tools and android app. And yes, I maintained all 3 jobs concurrently.

To be honest, it was very stressful for me. But I needed that, I was exploring myself, to maintain these 3 responsibilities properly, I needed to be efficient and productive. And at the top of that, I needed happiness. Soft and simple happiness.

I took one week break from all of my responsibilities and started to learn and seek happiness. I studied many theories, many stories. Among those, one simple concept has blown my mind, and that is minimalism. I will write details about my version of minimalism later, but today I want to focus on my outfit choice.

Some of the minimalism blogs I followed, almost everyone has this common. Wearing the same dress every day. At first, I found this funny. Funny and lame. Lame and pointless.

But still, so many people are following this, there can be a reason. So I decided to give it a try. I bought 13 different grey t-shirts, 5 black pants and 2 black shoes, initially I committed to a 30-day experiment.

I am writing this post after 365 days of this experiment, and I am still wearing the same dress every day. Here's why.

Motivation to be consistent

Consistency is key to achieve something, we know that. But being consistent isn’t so easy. At least for me. Wearing the same dress every day is a consistent process. By wearing the same dress, I can start my day by ‘being consistent’. It motivates me throughout the day to maintain the other consistent tasks I am doing to achieve my goals.

Comfort in decision making

It is the most popular theory. I read it before this experiment and didn’t give a shit back then. But after this experiment, I really felt that. At the end of 150 days, I made at least 300 fewer decisions. I didn’t have to bother about what I would wear for office and what for a date. It’s a simple grey shirt and a black pant, that’s it.

Less stress

I remember, during my first days of this experiment, I had to give a presentation at a conference at IUB. I was very confused at first - what to wear? Am I becoming more formal? or more casual? Do I look okay? Etc etc. Later I decided to give the presentation with my iconic dress and I didn’t feel anything about it at all. Having said that, the same outfit every day definitely reduces your stress because you are confident enough about this.

People actually don’t care

It was my greatest misconception, “people are thinking about my dress”. To be honest, everyone has their own problem to solve, as long as your dress is decent, people won’t notice this at all. And even if someone cares, I don’t have to impress him by my dress 😛
Not spending unnecessary money on clothing
Well, I didn’t think about this benefit at the beginning, but I found the discounts in the brand shops don’t attract me anymore. I don’t feel tempted to buy clothes anymore. That helps me practice minimalism easily.

Being More Organised

Before this experiment, I used to wear whatever I found in front of me. And most of the time I couldn’t get anything. It was too unorganised and messy back then. But now, I know where my 13 t-shirts are, I wash them in every 2 weeks, and keep them clean and organised. It adds a layer of satisfaction in my daily life.

There are many more benefits actually, I couldn’t express properly how this simple lifestyle added happiness and efficiency in my life. This is something you won’t understand unless you try it for at least 30 days.