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For Obama, Jobs, and Zuckerberg, Boring Is Productive
Hugh Pickens writes "Robert C. Pozen writes in the Harvard Business Review that while researching a behind-the-scenes article of President Obama's daily life, Michael Lewis asked President Obama about his practice of routinizing the routine. 'I eat essentially the same thing for breakfast each morning: a bowl of cold cereal and a banana. For lunch, I eat a chicken salad sandwich with a diet soda. Each morning, I dress in one of a small number of suits, each of which goes with particular shirts and ties.' Why does President Obama subject himself to such boring routines? Because making too many decisions about mundane details is a waste of your mental energy, a limited resource. If you want to be able to have more mental resources throughout the day, you should identify the aspects of your life that you consider mundane — and then "routinize" those aspects as much as possible. Obama's practice is echoed by Steve Jobs who decided to wear the same outfit every day, so that he didn't have to think about it and the recent disclosure that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is proud that he wears the same outfit every day adding that he owns 'maybe about 20' of the gray, scoop neck shirts he's become famous for. 'The point is that you should decide what you don't care about and that you should learn how to run those parts of your life on autopilot,' writes Pozen. 'Instead of wasting your mental energy on things that you consider unimportant, save it for those decisions, activities, and people that matter most to you.'"
it worries me how much mental energy they were putting into something as simple as getting dressed or what to have for breakfast. sounds like an anxiety disorder to me.
Don't most people eat the same thing (or about the same thing) for breakfast and lunch every day? I have for years and years, but I guess I didn't realize it was noteworthy to do so.
yeah because, thinking "what should I wear today" is a really complicated endeavor, so much that it affects the rest of my day. *sigh*
English isn't my first language (so correct me if I'm wrong) but from TFA
I don't think that the quoted part means that Obama always eats that breakfast, etc. as the summary seems to imply.
If I'm reading the article correctly, the President did not say "'I eat essentially the same thing for breakfast each morning: a bowl of cold cereal and a banana. For lunch, I eat a chicken salad sandwich with a diet soda. Each morning, I dress in one of a small number of suits, each of which goes with particular shirts and ties". The author said that about himself.
Can this concept be explained in simple pictograms so my wife might understand?
I don't put forth any effort in to dressing my self. For work I have a few pairs of black and grey pants and some dress shirts that go with either color pant. I just grab one of each and put them on. For weekend cloths all my t shirts go with my jeans so I just grab what ever is on top in the drawer. For me it is pure laziness, while it seems like my wife frets over every thign she wears.
Time to offend someone
Any virtue can be taken to a fault. Asimov grew his sideburns because he realized he could save much more time just shaving his chin. Taking it to an extreme, we'll have:
I bathe every other day because I don't smell that bad.
I pee in my empty soda bottle so I don't have go get up from my chair during a raid.
I eat other people's lunches out of the fridge at work because it saves time on making my own.
With any of this stuff, if you can live your life without adverse impact it's a quirk or an idiosyncracy. If it has an adverse affect on yourself or those around you, we're talking a disorder.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
I realized somewhere along the line that there were a lot of little everyday decisions that really didn't matter to me. Choosing what to have for lunch every day is a great example of one of these things. Lunch on a weekday is still "just lunch" to me, I have no wish to go out and eat some extravagant delicious meal, I just want to eat something relatively tasty and get back to work so over time I've resorted to having a fairly small number of "standard" lunches that I prepare for myself. This way I know I'm getting something I like and I don't have to put time and effort into picking what I'm going to eat every day.
Of course, you can take this too far and I always make sure to get a little more inventive with food, clothes and other routine things on weekends to make sure I don't get stuck in a rut.
But overall I think it's a good approach to those little boring and inefficient things in life. I used to never understand how some people could spend 20-30 minutes in the morning just picking out what to wear, then it dawned on me that they actually had no idea at all what to wear until they got out of the shower and it was time to get dressed, so at this point they'd actually start out trying to pick the "right" underwear, and socks, and pants, and shirt. Finally when they were done they'd take a few minutes to try to figure out what they should have for breakfast...
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
This has been the case for every president since the teleprompter was invented.
There was an episode on The Big Bang Theory where Sheldon started using dice rolls to make mundane decisions, thereby freeing up his mind to work on more complex problems.
I never really thought about it, but I gravitate towards that kind of behavior. I too tend to eat the same things for breakfast and lunch, and have a limited set of wardrobe choices.
IIRC there was a recent study that indicated that multitasking was not such a good idea. It tends to make one mediocre at all tasks rather than making one good at any single task. This seems to tie in to the thesis of this article.
Proverbs 21:19
Really, Is, It, Saving, That, Much, Space?
none
I had no idea getting dressed was so mentally taxing to some people.
The president, I can understand (he's always in the public eye) but the others? Whatever, dudes, you have/had more money than God, if you want to wear the same clothes every day, knock yourself out, but don't give me this bullshit about expending energy on deciding what socks to put on in the morning.
A squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag is fast and bulbous, got me?
I've routinized phone calls from friends. I just give bland answers while I'm also on the computer, until they go away. That way they don't distract me from what I really love, which is my computer and phone, for work and play. I also skip birthday gifts and cards, and even routine courtesies like saying please and thank-you -- you know, manners. By routinizing them, I can check my eight favorite websites 10 times a day.
I assume that you, too, are constantly followed by journalists and photographers, appear in television essentially daily, constantly meet important people from other cultures, etc...?
What, none of that applies to you? Perhaps that might affect the fact that appearance might be more important factor for him than it is for you?
it worries me how much mental energy they were putting into something as simple as getting dressed or what to have for breakfast. sounds like an anxiety disorder to me.
You'd be surprised. I mean, let's take myself for example. Even starting to think about shaving sets my mind abuzz with contours and shear strength equations dealing with each follicle of hair. Before applying the lather, it's a pain to model my face in a three dimensional image so as to optimize the amount of face covered per stroke versus a random walk pattern across the ... and I've already spent too much time on it so I don't shave.
... and I've already spent too much time on showering so I don't shower.
... and I've already spent too much time on selecting a suitable place to live so here I sit in my mom's basement.
Then there's the possibility of showering. However, to achieve the optimal temperature at which my body enjoys a shower requires me to measure the temperature of the water leaving the shower head. But wait, as my body enters this spray, the temperature adjusts based on the laws of cooling since my body is a colder object than the water or air inside the shower
Then there's selecting an adequate living arrangement. First I start out walking about the city inspecting each apartment and judging the socioeconomic surroundings with an expected value weighted against my monthly payment combined with the ability and freedom to do whatever I want when I want. But that's a nebulous construct that requires set theory and a rigorous modeling of how I'll spend the coming year since the contract length is variable based on property
Don't even get me started on employment or fornication. I need to conserve that brain power to be the indomitable force of genius that I am.
My work here is dung.
You must be new here. The debate happened today. The earliest that Slashdot could get to obfuscating it would be next Sunday.
If you haven't read Jurassic Park, check it out. I picked up recently and was surprised how much I enjoyed it. The article made me think of this passage
----
"But don't you find it boring to wear only two colors?"
"Not at all. I find it liberating. I believe my life has value, and I don't want to waste it thinking about clothing," Malcolm said. "I don't want to think about what I will wear in the morning. Truly, can you imagine anything more boring than fashion? Professional sports, perhaps. Grown men swatting little balls, while the rest of the world pays money to applaud. But, on the whole, I find fashion even more tedious than sports
If selecting what to wear and/or what to have for breakfeast impair you to the degree that it affects your actions for the remainder of the day then you probably seriously should consider a CT scan.
"I have downloaded hundreds and hundreds of records, why would I care if somebody downloads ours?" Robin Pecknold
I wouldn't drink soda everyday, not even diet. I would think the president of all people would have a nutritionist helping him plan out healthy meals.
I wouldn't say it was an Obama/Jobs/Zucker thing, it's more likely the audience that dictates the spin. Try selling this story in a positive light to Grazia, Vogue or... that other fashion one, see what kind of reaction you get there.
Sociopaths are obsessive-compulsive about what they eat and wear. Who would have figured?!
Dean Kamen is known for wearing jeans, a denim shirt, and workboots ever day. Same idea.
Dean Kamen is also know for wearing the same outfit every day.
This also kinda reminds me of how Buckminster Fuller defended his sterile architecture by suggesting that its mass-produced homogeny would encourage people to differentiate themselves by what they do rather than where they live.
It's a vaguely communist-sounding notion that bland equality can make us more free. Perhaps this is why most public schools in the U.S. don't require uniforms.
pi = 3.141592653589793helpimtrappedinauniversefactory7
Or, the morning routine of an American Psycho: http://brandonmichaelblack.com/articles/patrick_bateman_morning_routine/default.htm#.UG2TdmbJCPc
Forward! -- Emperor Norton, 2012
For guys like Obama, Jobs or Zuckerberg, they could easily afford a butler who would make those kinds of decisions for them, lay out their clothes for the day, prepare varied breakfasts and lunches, set out diary appointments etc. For normal guys there's always the wife, and mom for the basement dwelling types.
How could you suspect that the illustrious Slashdot gods would attempt such petty and obvious tactics to make their candidate appear more intelligent? You sir are a bitter, jaded, and racist person who is just jealous of all that Obama has achieved.
My wife would like to point out that this is not true for women - my social mores they are bound to dress in different outfits each day.A woman that wears the same dress or blouse every day is seen as inferior. She would not be honored by society for her simplicity.
People are always drawing their own conclusions about why I wear all black all the time, but this is the real reason... I just can't be bothered to match colours in the morning, and it narrows down my options greatly when buying new clothes. (Plus black fabric is a lot more forgiving with stains.)
Obama has done a great job continuing the Bush-Cheney agenda while fooling some into thinking he's some kind of "liberal progressive" (the U.S. meaning of the words, not the rest of the world's)
Every non-metrosexual already knows this. Here's how we dress when we go to work:
1) First socks and underwear we see in the drawer
2) Top pair of pants on the pile (or on the rack, but I wear jeans these days)
3) Warm? First non-threadbare shirt on the rack. Otherwise, first shirt with non-ratty collar, followed by first sweater in the pile.
Takes about a minute. Heck, the time it took me to write this is probably the longest sustained period I've ever thought about what to wear in the morning.
In the book "Surely your joking, Mr Feynman", Richard Feynman talks about how he decided that he didn't want to waste time deciding on what to eat for desert - so he standardized on chocolate pudding.
Given that humans can't really multi-task there is a lot to be said for eliminating mundane decisions.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
I think extreme lack of variation in lifestyle is one of the hallmarks of a hacker; at least it was in the 1980s. You don't spend mental energy on things unrelated to what you actually want to do. Clothes are there to cover the body, and serve no other purpose. Food is there to nourish. You don't immerse yourself in these things because they're distracting.
This comes from a desire to be on autopilot in all the necessary but uninteresting aspects of life. Hackers never want to put thought into dressing, because that's irrelevant. It is functional and nothing more, so good enough is the best it gets. In the same way, a lot of successful people cut corners on aspects of personal appearance or home maintenance. It's just not part of the mission.
This has been the case for every president since the teleprompter was invented.
The first time I ever saw those glass-panel teleprompters they were surrounding Saint Reagan. One on each side, so he could turn and spontaneously address the audience.
The way some people carry on, you'd think that teleprompters had had to be specially invented just for Obama.
All you nay-sayers in the comments should read about the phenomenon of decision fatigue.
I do the same thing as Obama and Steve Jobs -- I keep the "routine" parts of my life as routine and predictable as possible, so I don't have to waste any energy on them. I've been doing this instinctively for at least ten years, but I only found out about decision fatigue a few months ago. It makes perfect sense; I have to make decisions all day long to do my day job as a programmer, and the quality of those decisions definitely starts to decline after 4 or 6 hours of work effort. And any effort spent on pointless decisions (what color shirt to wear to work, what restaurant to go to at lunch) just saps your energy that you need for making actual decisions that matter. Somehow my subconscious discovered that it had to protect this limited resource and started pushing me to stop caring about all the little shit.
Instead of wearing the same thing every day, have a variety of preselected options to choose from. If you know each one looks good on you, who cares which option you pick? If that's considered too much mental energy to spend then I think you're fooling yourself about how much work that same amount of mental energy will accomplish elsewhere. Hell, you could wear option #1 on Monday, option#2 on Tuesday, etc. to reduce the effort even further. Reduce it to a lookup table. :) Same goes for food.
Where's the research? I think those people do those things so that others will think they're like Albert Einstein. If you find it taxing to pick a shirt or a breakfast, you've got problems.
...warheads.
When you're the president of the United States, you get a bit of a pass on fashion. Basic, functional, professional is going to be enough when you know the launch codes.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Another bent out of shape attribution to Steve "He who invented everything and nothing" Jobs ... there was talk of Einstein doing this, and plenty of others during the last 100 years to pick through ... looks to me that Jobs is plucked out of the air whenever someone wants to waffle about innovation or trend-setting.
I feel like there's a limited number of arbitrary decisions I can make in a day. I wonder if I'm limited by an internal entropy generation rate. As an experiment, I've made a random number generator that flashes 4 random digits at an interval controlled by a dial ranging from 3/second to once every 30 seconds. I'm not sure if it helps, but it's a nifty trinket any way.
"Don't worry, if this exact same story were written about Romney all we'd hear about is how uncreative, unfeeling, and un-individualistic Romney is..."
His man-servant, personal shopper, fashion counselor and wardrobe assistant make these decisions for him.
In a school uniform company.
Sig. Sig. Sputnik
I do all of the above because I'm a cheap bastard and only have a few pairs of clothes.. and am too lazy to go down to the local Target. Simplify.
"The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place." George Bernard Shaw
The way some people carry on, you'd think that teleprompters had had to be specially invented just for Obama.
I thought they were invented by Steve Jobs.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
blue jeans, T-shirts, decades.
God tells Romney what underwear to wear. It's fire-proof too.
rewriting history since 2109
Richard Feynmann was doing this back in the 30's and 40's....
The "teleprompter thing" is mostly just people trying to justify their dislike for the man. When we dislike someone, we tend to latch on to any little thing to validate our dislike, regardless of how valid a complaint it is.
Please note, this is neither a defense nor an attack on Obama. This has happened with pretty much every political figure in history (that you could legally speak ill of in public).
He can have an aid pick his breakfast/ties if he wants, but he doesn't do that because he likes his cereal and diet cokes. He's an old man now and he's comfortable with routines. There's nothing wrong with that, it happens when you get old. Before you know it you're yelling at the secret service to wipe their feet before they enter the White House. But so what? At least he can spontaneously decide to switch his diet coke for coffee if he wanted to without risking the wrath of an interplanetary time traveling deity.
If you mod me down the terrorists will have won
All these people have gargantuan genitals. Perhaps that has more to do with it.
I like the sentiment expressed. Why waste mental resources on mundane decisions that don't amount to anything worthwhile. I created a similar routine with my clothes, however, I do not by wearing THE EXACT same thing every day (and bragging about it), but, by creating a routine system that still requires no decision making yet produces a diverse look.
I have one pair of stylish black shoes (slip on even) that look great with jeans, pants or a suit.
I have two dozen pair of black socks that are all identical. This means I merely need to grab two socks and I know they match. I don't allow variations (which means you end up having to inspect each sock to find it's right mate) and who cares about socks.
Finally, and this is the key, I have a limited set of jeans and button shirts that all mix and match without exception.
At the beginning of the day, I merely pick a pair of jeans, grab a shirt, two socks and slip on my one pair of shoes and voila I've spent no effort thinking about it yet I look great.
Runesabre
Enspira Online
Obama is very definitely a progressive. If you look at the history of progressive ideology, you will discover that its main goal is for bureaucrats to take over making all decisions for everyone (except for the elites who are above the law). Progressives believe that everything will work better if "experts" make the important decisions (like what cars are built by the car companies, what crops are grown by farmers, what type of food is in the grocery store).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
As are women who work hard, do a disproportionate share of the housework, and still manage to look a lot nicer than the guy. This article sounds like a male teenager pontificating.
Up until now, I didn't realize how much hackers resemble Batman from a Frank Miller comic...
It takes me two seconds to pick what to wear in the morning.
My life is a horrible inefficient mess because I'm not spending that two seconds curing cancer?
That's just dumb.
My life is a horrible inefficient mess for entirely different and better reasons.
Jobs, and Zuckerberg? Like this article is trying to compare the Guinness's of this century? Am I missing something, because usually smart people like Jobs, and Zuckerberg use their brains to create magnificent things, what is Obama great creation? The deficit?
Sooo many things are wrong with this comment that it is utter genius...
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Like this article is trying to compare the Guinness's of this century?
What do Irish dry stouts have to do with this?
what is Obama great creation?
Er, um, yeah, um, maybe we should move to the next topic.
Socks are practical in that they provide a removable layer of fabric between your skin and the interior of the shoe. This helps prevent chaffing and reduces the amount of bacteria buildup in the show (assuming that clean socks are used regularly).
What these guys have shown is an ability to rise above what I call decision paralysis. Everywhere we go we are inundated with choices. Next time you go to the grocery store or pharmacy take a moment and marvel at all the choices we have. Dozens of shampoo formulas, pain relievers, snacks, clothing...you name it. For many people that's a good thing but for others it just stops them cold. I remember being in a Walmart a few months ago. I go to the aisle and pick up a bottle of aspirin. There is a lady there trying to decide which one to get. I go to get something else, on the other side of the store, and discover that I had forgot to get something in the pharmacy section so I go back. That same lady is still there trying to decide what to get. Decision paralysis. It must have been a good 10 or 15 minutes and yet there she was still trying to figure out what to get.
What Obama and others have figured out is that often the worst decision is no decision at all. You just pick something and go with it. If it doesn't work out, deal with it and adjust.
My wife makes all the decisions I couldn't care less about. That makes her happy. I follow her around while thinking about science, technology, philosophy, and all the things that make me happy. She doesn't like making big decisions. That's my area of expertise. She fills my life with diversity and excitement, and best of all, she gives me time to do what matters to me. Jobs, Obama, and Zuckerberg may have a lot of money, but I seem to have something they all desperately lack.
I was once accused of failing to "wear the pants" in my marriage. I just smiled. Pants are overrated. They should only be worn when you care. I like the arrangement exactly the way it is.
I remember a movie, I believe from the 80s, who's main character had a closet full of suits that where all identical. The character explains that he got the idea from Einstein, who did so to minimize the amount of mental effort required deciding what to wear each day so that he could utilize that time and effort on more imortant things.
Of course I am paraphrasing here, and I don't remember for sure what the movie was, although I think it may have been the 80s remake of "The Fly".
"Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is proud that he wears the same outfit every day adding that he owns 'maybe about 20' of the gray, scoop neck shirts he's become famous for."
Seriously? Is this actually true (being "famous" for this)? I have never heard of his clothing even mentioned.
Is this "famous" on par with the article yesterday that talked about Diaspora being a "sensation"?
BTW from this description, for all I know he's wearing a gray wife-beater every day.
#DeleteChrome
A small number of suits, each with matching shirts?
That's for losers, Barack. I have a small number of dark suits, and a set of white shirts. No time wasted on the matching process.
I also have a few white+blue shirts. I use these like the tape on those supermarket checkout registers: the color is a signal that the tape is about to run out. So, if I ever find myself wearing a non-white shirt, I know I need to go to the store and buy 12 white shirts.
Its so obvious now, why didn't I see it before? Obama is just like Einstein and all of these other smart and wealthy people who wear the same clothes all the time. Obama is so smart. Now I'll vote for him for sure!
Einstein was a genius. When he was offered a job as president, he refused!
Same idea.
Hey, my spell check gets it wrong sometimes. Should have noticed, but didn't.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
I blame it on Slashdot, for not allowing me to edit after posting.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
I have to know where you are getting socks, because I would love to do that but everyone insists on 3 pairs of socks in a package all with a different design and it makes me furious
I don't think I'd trust someone who needed a nutritionist to eat healthily. It suggests incompetence, ignorance, and a lack of personal will.
Or it speaks of honesty, humility and lack of time or energy. If you are someone who is genuinely busy and has the financial resources to outsource decision making on routine meals, why wouldn't you? Basically you are trading money for time. Sure, you could take the time to research nutrition and cooking and handle it yourself just like you can mow your own lawn. But if you get no joy from the task and have the ability to hire others to do it for you you would be a fool not to.
Don't mistake lack of interest with lack of aptitude. Speaking for myself, I actually like to cook (occasionally), am pretty good at it and have a pretty good working knowledge of nutrition but I'd hire a personal chef/nutritionist in a heartbeat to take care of that for me most days. I genuinely would rather spend my effort elsewhere. There is nothing preventing me from cooking food whenever I want to but much of the time I just am not all that interested 90% of the time. It's really easy to make bad choices like going to McDonalds because it is quick and easy and requires little thought. You are basically already outsourcing it to McDonald's "nutritionists" if you do that. Why not hire someone who can do it better if you have the means?
For about five years I ate the exact same thing - pasta, with store-bought sphag. sauce - for supper every day. Once every couple of months I would get tired of it and make something else, then back to pasta.
I used to think maybe I was a bit odd doing this, until I found out that Jay Leno does the same thing!
I did this because food really isn't important to me, and the time to shop and cook was a big waste - I'm sure you can save more time and mental energy by doing this than just by not having to choose which shirt to wear every morning!
Nowadays I have a more varied diet partly because I'm married and my wife does most of the cooking, but we still only have a relatively small number of dishes that we cook (maybe 10-12).
I guess I do the same thing. I show up to work at the same time every day, eat the same thing, do the same kind of work, visit same websites, wait for leaving time and then drive same route back home. No energy wasted on the mundane stuff.
For my current batch of black socks, I went to Target where they have the black dress socks hanging on individual hooks (usually, as you say, in batches of 1-3), found a pattern I liked AND that had about two dozen identical in stock to buy then and there. I'm down to about 8 pair now (they get holes over time and then I toss them) and I'll go through this routine again when I'm down to about 5 pairs (and throw out whatever remaining existing socks I have since they probably won't match the new batch). Not going to lie, sometimes you have to drive to a variety of places to find a store with a style you like and have enough quantity in stock.
Runesabre
Enspira Online
Back in DC I had a pattern going for a while. Jeans and T-shirt. Shirt colors were: black, red, green, $random, $usually_black.
"It must be Wednesday. My shirt is green".
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
When I first started working in an office my mother took me to a place where a lady put different coloured pieces of cloth on me and at the end gave me a little book of the colours that suited me the best. Now I only buy clothes that are those colours, and they all match each other and all match me perfectly.
Fantastic post, and very similar to my own system. I thought I'd share the mildly more complex angle I have which involves a second pair of shoes coloured brown and a set of white socks for wearing with said brown shoes. These are with either brown pants or jeans.
From hell's heart I fstab at /dev/hdc
Thanks RB
I like what you're saying. My personal experience is that the only real variation people notice in practice is your shirt and sometimes whether your pants are lighter or darker than normal. That's why I optimized my system to simply focus on creating variety where I feel it has the most impact (the shirt). It's not uncommon for me to wear the same looking jeans over and over yet I look different every day.
The real key to this is being disciplined. It's tempting to want to buy new black socks that don't quite match your existing black socks but keep your old black socks. I mean why not, they are still good... except now you've created an unneeded variation you have to deal with each and every day you want to pick a pair of socks.
Same goes with shirts... all my shirts go well with any pair of blue-ish jeans (except black or really white faded jeans). So when it comes to buying jeans, I don't get white or black, just lighter and darker versions of blue jeans even if I find a killer pair of jeans I really really want.
Finally, the black shoes are key to the whole efficiency because, well, black goes with everything.
Ultimately, I put my effort into the once-a-month / once-a-year shopping effort and make the daily choosing and wearing effort a no brainer.
Runesabre
Enspira Online
Not to sound like a chauvinist, but if deciding what to wear really takes that much of your mental energy, then I think we might have just found the actual reason why women don't rule the world.
Bow before me, for I am root.
I thought the most interesting part was the bit of doublethink he describes on page 6-8, where first they're talking about invading Libya.
First, there's the bit where they're contemplating Qaddafi's intentions...
'Qaddafi himself had given a speech on February 22, saying he planned to “cleanse Libya, house by house.”'
Then, a little later, he's talking about composing his speech to argue in favor of going into Libya...
“What I had to do is describe a notion of a just war. But also acknowledge that the very notion of a just war can lead you into some dark places.”
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Quite often they tend not to consider that introverts don't, and instead find the constant novelty draining.
Novelty isn't inherently draining to an introvert - social interaction is. I'm an introvert myself, albeit not severely so and I am quite energized by novelty. I just don't much care what other find novel. Engineering and science research fascinate me whereas fashion and reality tv could not be more boring. Both have novelty as a component but the difference is one is internally directed and the other is externally directed.
For all those people who think this is silly... Who think that people who do this don't have the mental capacity to simply choose their clothes for the day....
You aren't thinking enough. It is not a matter of not having the TOTAL mental capacity to choose clothing. It is a matter of not having the EXTRA mental capacity because we are spending so much of our capacity on other things. Some of us spend every waking minute (and many of our non-waking minutes) constantly thinking about a dozen different things. Interrupting that chain of thought for the mundane things is more trouble than it is worth. And it is not just picking the clothes. It is a hundred different things throughout the day, for which wasting even one minute's thought each adds up to about two hours of wasted thinking time per day, especially when you consider the time it takes to get back into what you were thinking about before.
Read 'Your Brain at Work.' It is an excellent book about how your brain actually functions and how to maximize how much "work" you can get out of it per day. More and more research is showing that the more we can automatize in our daily lives, the more capacity we have left for what really matters.
I used to work in a job where I had to wear a button up shirt and tie every day, but recently moved to a tech company where everyone dresses casually. It was interesting when techies would say things like "I'd hate to have to dress up in a certain way every day".
I guess a lot of people like to "express themselves" through what they wear, which is fine. But for someone who couldn't care less about fashion, the decision about what to wear in the morning is an incredibly tedious one. Not to mention the effort you have to put in to shopping.
The great thing about formal attire is that it's relatively standard, so you just follow a few simple rules and you end up looking good without having to think to much.
I guess some people find a formal dress code to be staid and boring but for me, picking clothes is even more boring!
President wastes time giving pointless interview to journalist where he talks about not wasting time on things like clothes and breakfast.
"[...] for a group of healthy college-age males, there was remarkably little discussion of a topic which commonly obsesses groups of that composition. Females. Though some led somewhat active social lives, the key figures in TMRC-PDP hacking had locked themselves into what would be called 'bachelor mode.' It was easy to fall into -- for one thing -- as opposed to the hopelessly random problems in a human relationship -- which made hacking particularly attractive. But an even weightier factor was the hackers' impression that computing was much more important than getting involved in a romantic relationship. It was a question of priorities. Hacking had replaced sex in their lives."
"[Hacking] was a mission. You would hack, and you would live by the Hacker Ethic, and you knew that that horribly inefficient and wasteful things like women burned too many cycles, occupied too much memory space. 'Women, even today, are considered grossly unpredictable,' one PDP-6 hacker noted, almost two decades later. 'How can a hacker tolerate such an imperfect being?'"
Both excerpted from Steven Levy's retrospective Hackers - Heroes of the computer revolution, published 1984.
It comes across as a bit more misogynistic than intended (the book was from 1984 and the people being interviewed were talking about their memories of 1960s/70s MIT), but it's a pretty accurate summation of how I've lived my life. If I'm not attempting to attract a mate or land a new job (same thing, really), what difference does my appearance make?
I wear a different outfit everyday and I still don't think about it.
Now granted, the foot issue you explained is pretty rediculous, but there's other people on here saying they eat the same thing every day. That is actually not good for your body. Its just like an exercise routine, if you do the same thing every time then it gets easy as your muscles adapt and you get less benefit from it. Your body also adapts to your diet, and keeping your food choices irregular helps burn more calories and keep your metabolism high.
All Nerds do that, they dress the same every day. The variations happen due to insufficient specification of what is what. Therefore T-Shirt may have different colors. Top nerds fixed that issue.
Consequently this makes Obama a Nerd as well. And Romney is most likely the opposite of that.
Top tip: if you add some underpants to the mix you won't have to change your jeans so often.
Because he's a pinhead.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I worked with a woman who had a similar set up. She had five work outfits, one for each day of the week. She refused to spend any more time, effort, or money on her work attire, and I think it was a really cool way to approach it. She always looked appropriately dressed and yet spent almost no energy on it. For her, it wasn't about being some super productive power worker executive type, though. It was the opposite. She worked for a paycheck and wanted to spend as little time thinking about work as possible. I found her approach refreshing and practical and am surprised more people don't do the same thing. For myself, I work in a casual environment so am able to buy clothes that work in a lot of different situations, so I don't have a separate work wardrobe.
Totally awesome comment, dude.
As creative writing, that was great. Colorful, simile, creative, and with great pacing. That could have easily been part of a published novel. (I hope the passage wasn't a quote from somewhere & I missed it.)
Give up the day job - write for a living.
This is a tough thing to talk about, I think most technology workers kind of do this too but sometimes I get a weird look like, "didn't you wear that yesterday?!". I have three pairs of pants and shirts, I grab them and put them on and go to work. They all match with each other, but I think even THAT is going too far. I like Job's approach - same style every day. Maybe I'll get 10 ninja suits or something, that should cover me.
Only the rounded corner versions.
At the core, that's fashion. A way to express who do you want to be, and projecting an image that conveys something you want to say about yourself.
Fashion to me is basically putting on a costume. Even if you purposefully put little effort into fashion you still are putting on a costume and it does say something about who you are and what you care about. Whether you dress in a suit or jean/tshirt or wedding gown, you are playing a role like an actor on stage. My choice to wear jeans today doesn't tell much about who I am but it does say something - and that is ok. And if someone judges me too harshly regarding my choice of dress, that tells me something about them AND it might be a signal that I need to re-evaluate the "role" I've chosen to play that day. We need to interact with the world and once our clothing has served its protective purpose everything else is costuming. It's possible to spend too much or too little time fussing about it but most people manage to strike some sort of vaguely reasonable balance.
My life is a horrible inefficient mess because I'm not spending that two seconds curing cancer?
Maybe you'd rather spend that 2 seconds playing computer games or walking in a park or playing with your dog or anything else that you would rather be doing. Frankly I can think of thousands of things to do that would be much more productive and fulfilling and useful than fussing over what to wear. It doesn't have to be be saving the world to be a better use of time.
I do the exact same thing.
Whenever my socks get old enough to start having holes in them, I throw them *all* away and buy 24 pairs of the exact same low-cut sport black socks. I throw them all in a flexible bin where I have my socks and my underwear. I can always just pick two socks and they always match. It's been like that for years and I'm very happy with my system.
I'd really like to do away with socks, though, but I haven't yet found a pair of shoes that I can comfortably wear sockless that won't chaff my skin (mainly the ankle and toes).
I also only have 2 pairs of jeans: medium and darker (no light jeans for me). That keeps it easy. And then my dress shirts for work all match both pairs of pants and my shoes. I also only buy dress shirts that you don't need to iron (wrinkle free or whatever they call it). I've been using the same set for a couple of years now and when I need to buy new ones I'll throw these away and buy the new ones from exactly the same brand, as long as they are wrinkle free, and in some bland corporate colors.
So for me I've solved the clothing problem. I'm now tackling the food problem, as someone that doesn't eat any fruits or vegetables - it's not easy.
Ob Oscar Wild: "Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months."
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
If the number of shoes, shirts and trousers you own are relatively prime to each other, you can wear them in cyclic order and not repeat a combination for a long time. For example, if you have 2 different pairs of shoes, 11 different pairs of trousers and 17 different shirts, you can go 374 days (LCM) without repeating a combination, which is more than a year.
You reversed it. It isn't that women are inferior, its that they are generally better at making decisions where there is no absolute correct answer. Doubly so in comparison to technical types that live and breathe deductive logic.
Because he always uses one-- always. Reagan often used notes. Reagan was also clearly more comfortable answering questions, even though he was far older than Obama and clearly occasionally suffered from "senior moments" even before he developed Alzheimer's. What's the real difference? Reagan acknowledged the value of the opinions of others, and expected criticism. Obama's reaction to criticism or mere questions on his ideas are answered by confused fumbling or barely constrained contempt for the challenger.
W rarely used a teleprompter; he preferred old-fashioned index cards. Does that make him dumber, or smarter than Obama and Reagan?
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
I don't understand--Are you claiming that Guinness is not synonymous with genius???
I'll just never understand why anyone would care about what covers their feet as long as they are comfortable.
Because they care about the image they present to others. You may not care much (and that is probably ok) but many people and especially many women do care very much. Shoes are a part of the way they present themselves and some people find significant entertainment in worrying about that. Also the social pressures on women are quiet different than those on men. The fact that many women spend so much time on their wardrobe is to a significant degree a reflection of this. You probably can wear black loafers with your pants and no one will think twice about it but if your GF were to wear the same shoes two days in a row there is a good chance other women will probably notice in a negative way.
Pretty much this. I was no fan of George W. Bush by the time his second term came around but I don't think I would ever sincerely use his poor impropmtu public speaking as a serious point against him (jokes, sure). There are plenty more substantial, and significantly less petty, things you can not like about a president.
It's because of things like this that I don't watch the news/speeches/debates - I read them instead if I can. I may not get the live feed, but if I can find a transcript I prefer it since it helps to trim away a slice of the appeal to emotion bullshit. I don't care how puppy-dog-eyed he got and sincerely addressed the audience while making bold body gestures to accent the point. I don't care how raucously the audience cheered and applauded. WHAT - THE - FUCK - DID - HE - SAY?
Non-sequitor:
I also despite news articles ABOUT debates. They're almost never news articles, but ambiguous profile pieces.
The FUCK does something like that even mean? I don't think you'd get away writing a sports article that only vaguely mentions that "some good things happened to one team and some bad things happened to the other" so why does it pass for a presidential debate?
Really, high school type horseshit like this.
Obama's even got debating down to a routine. Yes, everything he doesn't care about. Eating, clothing, debating, leading.
I hear you on the wrinkle issue, PC! Unfortunately, I have an affinity for button shirts that have nice stitched embroidery designs which means many of my shirts are wrinkle prone cotton. I do LOVE my wrinkle-free/iron-free shirts. To handle my cotton shirts my girlfriend and I bought a nice dryer with a steam function that suffices to handle the wrinkles pretty well. I envy her... all her dresses are made out of material that literally DOES NOT wrinkle even if she balls her dress up into a tiny ball in the suitcase. She pulls it out, flip flip, smooth as silk.
Runesabre
Enspira Online
Haha! Sounds like what I would expect from Sheldon!
Runesabre
Enspira Online
I think you mean Pro Tip but yea I was only discussing the visible parts.
Runesabre
Enspira Online
Same algorithm. My sock choice is white though (tube socks from Target). The shoes, multiple pairs of Merrell Encore black slipons, good with jeans or even more formal if needed. Multiple pairs because any good fitting shoe may suddenly get phased out and if you like it, you need backups.
H.
This is slashdot. What are you doing with a wife?
Also, I don't know about the others, but I'm pretty sure that Obama already has a wife. Link: http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/first-lady-michelle-obama
You'll notice that he doesn't post here.
You have a point, but its not my favorite beer.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
Like how people saw Bush's smile as a smirk. It looked like a smile to me but people see and latch on to what validates their opinion.
Brialliant! Get a CT scan while deciding what to wear, or what to eat for breakfast. This will help scientists determine which part of your brain to remove!
Now granted, the foot issue you explained is pretty rediculous, but there's other people on here saying they eat the same thing every day. That is actually not good for your body. Its just like an exercise routine, if you do the same thing every time then it gets easy as your muscles adapt and you get less benefit from it. Your body also adapts to your diet, and keeping your food choices irregular helps burn more calories and keep your metabolism high.
Well, that smells like grade-A bullshit.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
My friends and I have long since found a solution to trivial decision making through randomization. If nobody has strong opinions about where we eat, or what activity we do, etc we use a random number generator (typically a die or a coin) pick from a list and go. However I wouldn't say we do this is a effort to save mental energy, as much as to save time. Either way though it's easy to keep some variety without having to waste time/energy on decisions.
...is so mentally exhausting. I can't roll my eyes hard enough at this.
It takes me mere moments to decide what I'm going to wear each day, and the same goes for what I eat for breakfast, etc. Even when it does take me a few minutes to decide, it's not like I wrack my brain over it.
"I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it."
Simple Solution: Garanimals for Presidents®
Ordering military action? Match up the Gorilla
Debating your political opponent? Go with the Orangutan
Vising a coal mine for a photo op? Try the Rhinoceros
Yeah, right.
Subject says it all. It's a maxim I've observed for a long time.
My dad also taught me that prejudice saves time.
He's right.
And before you get all upset and "that's racist!" over that statement, just remember that prejudice can apply to anything. I am prejudiced against Toyotas, Saturns, Microsoft, anything requiring the use of iTunes, DRM, CocaCola, Disney, cats, small dogs, assholes and liberal Democrats. Some of these prejudices are arbitrary and others are clearly deserving.
Thus, just as the people described in the article, I have more free mental space to think about things that are more important to me.
1.Netcraft confirms:In Soviet Russia all your base welcomes a beowolf cluster of CowboyNeal overlords. 2.? 3.Profit!!1!
If choosing what to wear is reducing mental resources why not remove non-weather related clothing, ie in the buff naked is okay? You really want to see America smarter, remove indecent exposure and want the resources flow.
Think of it like packing your bags for to catch a morning flight out for a two weeks' vacation. What they're describing is the difference between packing your luggage the night before (or earlier) and packing it the morning of your flight.
For a lot of daily, repetitive actions it makes sense to think about them en masse. Planning your breakfast meals for a week, a month, or indefinitely allows you to think carefully --and once-- about the caloric content, nutrient balance, budget, time to prepare, time to eat, etc. Planning your outfits allows you the same luxury: it's easier to budget a the time spent dressing, laundering, and purchasing your clothes when you're not doing it over and over again every day.
I heard a radio interview of an efficiency expert who was asked --snidely, as if a positive answer would mean he was incredibly anal-- if he carefully planned out his morning bathroom routine. He said, without reservation, that indeed he did: he'd thought through his morning routine, and on his bathroom counter he lined the various products up he would use in the order he would use them.
Having these sorts of things set up for you just just step through without having to search for them is just like having your properly workstation configured: it saves you time and effort, and allows you to get started more quickly.
it worries me how much mental energy they were putting into something as simple as getting dressed or what to have for breakfast. sounds like an anxiety disorder to me.
No. That's what you want to believe. It doesn't take much mental effort to simplify the mundane. It is almost automatically. If you find yourself putting much mental energy on it, then you are doing it wrong, or you are the one having an anxiety disorder. Seriously.
For me, I kinda do the same. Same type of jeans and shirts every day, same brand, from the same place (Target). I really don't think much about it. Same with food (I can eat the same crap for days w/o getting bored.) It makes cooking so much easier. My work desk? Kinda disorganized, but I know where things are. I don't fret about noise, nor I need a quiet place to work.
The only things I care are those that directly affect my ability to get shit done.
OTH, I see people, men and women, fretting about what clothes to wear, how to combine them (":ZOMG did I wear a gren shirt yesterday, cuz I cannot wear the same colors I wore for the last 7 fucking days").
They always have to eat something different every day. "I can't eat the same, I need to feel inspired". Like dude/dudette, are you into making sure the color of your shit is different everyday because, I dunno, it's motivational?
Or like people who need absolute quiet and can't stand the person next cubicle who sneezes during allergy season.
Those extremes (and the people gravitating towards them) are the ones with an anxiety disorder. When you try to be efficient, and when you avoid nonsense, worthless trivia, focusing on what matters and normalizing the mundane becomes rather easy. It's not rocket science.
As long as it doesn't have shit stains, it's good to wear. Can't get any simpler than that :P
I alternate two pair of shoes so they can air out between wearings. It seems to decrease wear so I believe two pair lasts roughly three times as long as one pair of shoes.
Going without socks I think I'd try a five-to-seven day shoe cycle. I like socks, and often go through two pair a day in summer.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
Agreed.
I also agree with the point, though for a different reason. Eating the same thing every day, unless it's carefully chosen, may result in not getting all of the micronutrients that your body needs, variety makes it far more likely that you're getting everything your body could want.
I think it says a lot about today's fashion sense that you can look great in jeans. Really, it's just not that hard to look presentable, so what person outside the media stresses over getting dressed in the morning?
Your main conclusion, that eating the same food every day is bad for you, is correct. There are a larger variety of nutrients that you need than you can reasonably get in three meals. There are just too many different nutrients, and they come from different foods. So you need a variety of fresh fruits and vegetables for maximum health.
Your reasoning though is faulty, the body doesn't get used to the nutrients you give it and need different ones.
And it isn't bad to do the same exercise routine every time. You don't get less "benefit," your muscles are already optimized for that routine, and you maintain that optimization by repeating it. If you think you have to vary the routine to get the maximum benefit, it implies that you don't get enough exercise and have a theoretical belief that you can minimize your effort and still get the benefits do to some efficiency algorithm. But the benefits of exercise are mostly from achieving and maintaining an optimized state.
Because he always uses one-- always. Reagan often used notes. Reagan was also clearly more comfortable answering questions, even though he was far older than Obama and clearly occasionally suffered from "senior moments" even before he developed Alzheimer's. What's the real difference? Reagan acknowledged the value of the opinions of others, and expected criticism. Obama's reaction to criticism or mere questions on his ideas are answered by confused fumbling or barely constrained contempt for the challenger.
W rarely used a teleprompter; he preferred old-fashioned index cards. Does that make him dumber, or smarter than Obama and Reagan?
Every single detail you cite there is wrong, though.
Are you me? :-)
Add all-black-underwear and we have my wardrobe. The only distinction I have is "cold outside" and "warm outside". "Cold" -> a pair of extra wool socks, a warm sweater and perhaps scarf, mittens and wool cap when I go out (I live in Sweden - "cold outside" is actually cold).
Catpcha: "nipple". Seriously.
I'm sorry, but that's just OCD. Two seconds is not "fussing".
Have you actually ever met anyone with OCD? I'm guessing that the answer is a big fat no. OCD people obsess over often trivial things to a degree that their lives are worsened - to the degree they often cannot function. That couldn't be farther from making a few default choices in advance about things that you don't really care about all that much. I get the same very short haircut because I don't care to spend a lot of time worrying about my hair and my wife approves of the way it looks. I usually order the same beverage in restaurants. Spending time on things that don't actually matter to you is kind of stupid. If your clothes do matter to you then by all means, spend whatever time you feel is appropriate dealing with them.
And what is so unproductive about picking clothes to wear.
If you find the act of picking your clothes to be enjoyable then it probably isn't a waste of your time. We all have different interests. Personally I can think of few things less interesting than picking out my clothes for the day. I recognize its importance and give it as much time as I have to but I'm not about to give it a moment more time than absolutely necessary. I assure you that at the end of my life I'm not going to look back and wish I had spent more time picking out my clothes.
Its not the nutrients, its the caloric intake. If you eat the same thing every day, you have the same caloric intake every day. Your body adapts its metabolism to the fixed diet which results in it ending just above your needs due to our body's drive to create fat stores, which can result in weight gain. Calorie shifting is a well known technique for keeping off weight where you have a high calorie day and a low calorie day in your week, sometimes two of each, with different carb/protein/fat percentages for your day. It helps keep your metabolism higher than it would be if you evened it out because it doesn't allow your metabolism to settle into optimal efficiency, which lowers it.
Exercise is the same way. If you build muscle and do the same routine every day, your muscles adapt to the routine and it takes less work to get the routine done, because your body doesn't have to spend the energy re-adapting the muscles to the new activity (that painful soreness that comes with a new routine), and its the basis behind workout programs such as the popular P90X. The ad homenim attacks are unwarranted sir, I exercise 5-7 hours a week atm and am in tip top shape, prepping for the October mud run next week. I spent a lot of time optimizing my routines over the past several years and these have been most effective for when I want to get by with only 2-3 hours of exercise a week. They are endorsed by every trainer and nutritionist I've ever met.
Prove it.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
I've found it easier to just have someone else to decide what I wear, how I wear it, what type of haircut I get, when to get my nails cut, what soaps, shampoos and moisturisers to use... She knows all my measurements, what scents work, what colour ties work with which shirts and won't wash my face out or whatever. I haven't had to worry about anything except occasionally giving her money to buy me more stuff in nearly 4 years.
Someone in this position probably has a PA, Secretary or Wife who can do this, and for the women in power, they probably have one or more (more often than not) gay men at their disposal. Nobody at the top has an excuse for not looking good.
Founder & COO, Hayai India (hayai.in) / USA (hayaibroadband.com)
So Americans really consider a sandwich to be a decent lunch? No wonder the word "lanche" arrived in Portuguese meaning a "snack", not "lunch"...
Walters: "You're lazy?"
Obama: "You know, it's interesting. There is a deep down, underneath all the work that I do, I think there's a laziness in me. It's probably from, you know, growing up in Hawaii and it's sunny outside, and sitting on the beach.
http://www.q-and-a.org/Transcript/?ProgramID=1349
LAMB: No. Do you always wear that black leather jacket?
GILLESPIE: I do not, I do have – I do have several jackets and sometimes I – I almost always wear black, it became a choice. It kind of evolved over time because it has simplified my life, and I’m a big – as a Libertarian I’m a big fan of certain aspects of Henry David Thoreau’s life, certainly his essay on civil disobedience, it’s vastly important, and he also at various points talked about how you should simplify, simplify, simplify your life, and dressing in black certainly does that.
First we need to see this
http://www.vestidosxxl.com.ar/