I'd like to see a life so absurdly optimized for productivity that the maximum 10 seconds you save every morning by not having to decide what to wear is worth even mentioning.
The next post will probably be about opening doors more effectively, like Kramer, to save a couple of seconds off the time spent opening doors each day.
Once there was a man named Mr. Artesian and his activity was tremendous,
And he grudged every minute away from his desk because the importance of his work was so stupendous;
And he had one object all sublime,
Which was to save simply oodles of time.
He figured that sleeping eight hours a night meant that if he lived to be seventy-five he would have spent twenty-five years not at his desk but in bed,
So he cut his slumber to six hours which meant he only lost
eighteen years and nine months instead,
And he figured that taking ten minutes for breakfast and twenty minutes for luncheon and half an hour for dinner meant that he spent three years, two months and fifteen days at the table,
So that by subsisting solely on bouillon cubes which he swallowed at his desk to save this entire period he was able,
And he figured that at ten minutes a day he spent a little over six months and ten days shaving,
So he grew a beard, which gave him a considerable saving,
And you might think that now he might have been satisfied, but no, he wore a thoughtful frown,
Because he figured that at two minutes a day he would spend thirty-eight days and a few minutes in elevators just travelling up and down,
So as a final time saving device he stepped out the window of his office, which happened to be on the fiftieth floor,
And one of his partners asked "Has he vertigo?"
and the other glanced out and down and said "Oh no, only about ten feet more."
That reminds me of a short science fiction story, (I think by Isaac Asimov?) but I can't for the life of me remember what the title was. The protagonist was a writer, who began begrudge the time he would wait for his bus and time waiting for red lights and time waiting in general. By virtue of some machine, he was able to get everything in his life in sync, so that he never had to wait for other people or other things anymore. By the end however, he was unable to write anymore because he found that those times of randomness were when he was able to find his inspiration.
The following is a vignette from a series of vignettes on improv by Billy Merritt:
[THUMP, THUMP, CRASH]
The closet door explodes outward and inside the closet there is a 6 foot worm standing upright. It is green with bits of moist hair all over the body. The head of the worm has two giant eyes that always seems to be crying, and pinchers for a mouth. It makes a noise that is a cross between a hiss and a donkey bray.
Creature: What the fuck is that?!?!
MASTER: That is my worm.
Creature: Your what?
MASTER: My worm. We all have them.
Creature: I'm pretty sure I don't have a worm. I think I would know if I had something like that.
MASTER: Yours may not be as big, but you definitely have one, I can tell.
Crerature: How can you tell I have something like that? Is it inside me? Will it kill me? Jesus, get it out of me!
MASTER: EASY. Once you become an improviser, once you feel you have it down enough that you can improvise with anyone at any time. A worm develops inside you.
Creature: You mean once I finally get it, I get this, this worm inside me. I don't want that, it's disgusting.
[the worm weeps a little louder]
MASTER: The worm is all your bad habits. All the rules you break in order to make a scene work. It feeds off of your bad habits it lives off of denials and bad object work.
Creature: Well then don't you want to kill the worm. Your worm is so big.
MASTER: Thank you. You can't kill the worm, just like you can't eliminate all bad habits. Sometimes you have to break the rules in order to further the scene and go where you never thought you could. You must except your worm, you have a symbiotic relationship with it.
Creature: How do you know when you have a worm?
MASTER: You will know. It will speak to you. You will find yourself doing a scene and you will realize that what you are doing is wrong, then a little voice will say "do it, see what happens" , that is the worm.
Creature: Should I always listen to my worm?
MASTER: No, if you feed it too much it will consume you. You need to develop a relationship with your worm, know your worm, know when to let your worm out to play, and also know when to keep your worm inside.
Creature: Why is your worm so big?
MASTER: I'm a level 37 improviser, a shaft of light, My worm has grown along with me. But I still have to control it, make sure it doesn't get out of hand, or out of the closet.
Creature: What happens if you lose your worm, or if it dies.
MASTER: Then you become a improrobot, making automatic responses, and doing automatic scenes. You run a risk of losing your creativity, your life force. You lose the truth.
10 seconds here, 10 seconds there, before you know it you're talking about... I dunno... a minute or so. Can you seriously afford to waste that kind of time?
It's not so much "saving 10 seconds" as it is "avoiding cognitive context switching". If you happen to be thinking about something important, you don't want to interrupt that thought process to look through your clothes and decide what to wear, or what to have for breakfast, or which car to drive, or any number of other trivial decisions. If you can replace those with automatic non-decisions ("take the top shirt out of the drawer") then you can maintain focus.
oh lord..what about trying to be human for atleast some moments of the day instead of behaving like a production robot ?
I bet we have to face hundreds if not thousands of those trivial decisions each day and most arent reoccurring all the time so you cant automate them...
We also choose to avoid making those sorts of decisions when we're focusing on more important things, preferably putting them off for other times. For example, it's common for coders to close their door, not check their e-mail, etc. when they want to be "in the zone".
When I'm getting ready in the morning, I tend to be focused on the important things. In my case, as a stay-at-home dad, the important things tend to be plans for teaching my son and helping him with his disability. I've arranged the rest of my morning to be as automatic as possible so I don't have to think about what clothes to wear or what to have for breakfast.
Incidentally, my son and I were just walking around with buckets on our heads pretending to be robots. Counting robots, not production robots :)
My definition of being rich is being able to spend an inordinate amount of time making these trivial decisions.
I watch my daughters when they go to a local candy store, and they savor making their choices. They literally have hundreds of different items to choose from.
I'll agree. Running on a tight schedule this morning, I wasted a few minutes staring foggy-brained into the closet wondering what would go with what and not unduly duplicate what I wore the day before (and trying to remember what that was). Had to dig thru the dryer to find something suitable. Not a big deal, sure, but it kinda soured the start of the day, derailed whatever I'd rather be thinking of at the moment (was having enough trouble thinking period), and ended up about 15 minutes behind when I wanted to be where.
I've got enough trivial decisions & distractions to deal with. Reducing them is becoming paramount as my schedule, and mind, and life, become ever more crammed with stretches.
I'm seriously thinking of emptying the entire closet and refilling it with matched outfits kept that way. Not going so far as the same thing every day, but there are nice sets which should be in an organized grab-and-go arrangement.
Only in a hacker forum can you read about people wanting to eliminate the need to dress themselves in order to eliminate inefficient use of time.
Let's be realistic: getting dressed is not cognitively draining. Most of us rarely have to dress out of our comfort zone. Get yourself some "go to" outfits that are business-casual and semi-formal, so when the rare time comes when you have to "dress up" (what is that, four times a year?) you know what you're wearing. Other than that, it's jeans and t-shirts. When they all fit, you don't have to worry about what you happen to pick that day. I've never spent 15 minutes choosing what to wear in my life, and yet I've never been compelled to wear the same outfit on consecutive days.
>It's not so much "saving 10 seconds" as it is "avoiding cognitive context switching".
Humanity FAIL. As if you have some very crucial things to decide on the 15 minutes you spend waking up, dressing, shaving and such...
What "context switch"? You are not an OS, and you are not even fully awake, heck you're not even awake before coffee, much less just after you woke up.
> "As if you have some very crucial things to decide on the 15 minutes you spend waking up, dressing, shaving and such..."
I'm a stay-at-home dad. I very often wake up thinking about how to approach my son's disability, and I'm glad that I don't have to deal with interruptions to my thought process for something as pointless as "which shirt should I wear today". I just pull the top shirt off the pile and keep thinking about my son.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some very important playing-with-blocks to do. Humanity WIN.
>I'm a stay-at-home dad. I very often wake up thinking about how to approach my son's disability, and I'm glad that I don't have to deal with interruptions to my thought process for something as pointless as "which shirt should I wear today".
Sorry, but "stay at home dads" don't get to be interrupted by clothing choices anyway. It's not like the public is gonna see what you are wearing. Why even wear a shirt? Pyjamas would be equally OK. So you're not the kind of person I wrote my comment for (the same way the advice of wearing the same shirt every day would be totally worthless for a fashion model).
"stay at home dad" doesn't mean I'm in a cave all day. I go to the grocery store, the park, my yard, the neighbor's house, my son's therapist, and so on. I can't just walk around in boxers and slippers. I do have to dress at least somewhat sanely.
But even if I wasn't a stay-at-home dad, the same argument holds: some people are thinking about important things in the morning. Maybe you're not; maybe you walk around like a zombie until your second cup of coffee. But some people focus in the morning, and for those people, "automate unimportant decisions" is one strategy to let them stay focused on whatever important thing it is they're thinking about.
>"stay at home dad" doesn't mean I'm in a cave all day. I go to the grocery store, the park, my yard, the neighbor's house, my son's therapist, and so on.
Still, not the typical subject of the original post.
I think one of the main benefits of wearing the same thing everyday is the time you save shopping. Instead of going out to find something you like and try on different sizes you do it once and order the same size over the internet anytime you need replacements.
Personally I think it's a bit over the top to optimise this much but it would save more than just 10 seconds a day.
You also don't need to wear the same thing every day to avoid thinking about what to wear. I never think about what to wear, just put on clothes randomly from the drawers. Sometimes my girlfriend has to tell me to go change, like when I wore a green sweater and green pants.
I had to laugh here because sometimes my wife will tell me I have worn the same jeans and t-shirt all week and it is time to get out something clean/new. She then reminds me to shower.
The next post will probably be about opening doors more effectively, like Kramer, to save a couple of seconds off the time spent opening doors each day.