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Minnesota man seeks to simplify, wears outfit for one year


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STILLWATER, Minn. - For the next 10 months, Stillwater native Zach Carlsen will wear the same outfit every day.
 
Carlsen said he hopes the project, appropriately dubbed “the uniform,” will decrease the number of tiring daily decisions he makes, conserving more energy for other areas of his life.
 
After nine months of research and preparation, Carlsen is nearly two months into his uniform experiment. To clarify, Carlsen is not wearing the same clothes every day, but the same outfit.
 
His uniform consists of five pants, nine t-shirts, four sweaters, 18 boxers and 12 socks as well as four different pairs of shoes and two different belt buckles.
 
“If it’s like I’m going to meet the queen, I have one suit,” he added. “And it’s like break the glass for emergency use only.”
 
Carlsen learned about the idea of a daily uniform from Matilda Kahl’s Instagram account, a creative manager at Sony Music, according to her page. Kahl has worn the same outfit to work for more than five years.
 
Kahl isn’t the first person to experiment with wearing the same outfit every day. In fact, some of the nation’s most successful people wear a uniform.
 
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wears a gray t-shirt every day. In 2012, President Barack Obama told Vanity Fair he wore a blue or gray suit every day in order to reduce the number of little decisions he makes daily so he can use that energy to run the country.
 
Carlsen said he hoped applying the idea to his own life would help solve his decision fatigue — a psychology term that refers to the exhaustion that comes from making too many decisions.
 
 He explains decision fatigue with the “20 spoons” metaphor.
 
Say you start each day with 20 spoons to make decisions with. Before you leave the house, you’ve likely decided what to wear, what to eat, how much coffee to drink and whether you’ll do the dishes now or later. You give a spoon away with each decision, Carlsen said, and by the time you return from work, there’s little energy for other things.
 
Carlsen had already experimented with decreasing the amount of decisions he makes each week, he said. About two years ago, he started meal prepping on Sunday nights, which freed up a lot of time during the week.
 
“Most of us understandably just do it all and it’s an auto-pilot thing,” Carlsen said. “But I got tired of doing it all.”
 
He prepared for the project by researching clothes and the process. Given that he is a personal development coach, founder of Strengths Life Consulting, teacher, athlete and author, he needed an outfit that wasn’t too expensive and would work for all occasions, he said.
 
The uniform pants are made of breathable microfiber and the uniform has multiple layers to allow for Minnesota’s flexible seasons.
 
“As a coach, I like to be a guinea pig of my own tools,” Carlsen said. “Every step of the way, I’m pushing against these bigger ideas that have been challenging and uncomfortable.”
 
Physically letting go of his clothes gave him a “blueprint” for letting go of things he held onto internally, he said. Carlsen was an anxious child, he said, and he had Obsessive-compulsive disorder symptoms that followed him into adulthood. Little rituals like turning a shirt over three times before he put it on offered him a feeling of safety and security.
 
Within the first week of wearing the uniform, he said all of those rituals faded away.
 
“I just stopped doing it all at once,” Carlsen said.
 
As a personal development coach, Carlsen said he needs become “unstuck” himself before he can help others get out of a rut. He hopes the uniform project will help him create tools for mindfulness, minimalism and letting go that he can bring to his life coaching business, he said.
 
“It was about me getting out of my own way,” Carlsen said. “I feel like I’m more available to the world to be of service to other people.”
 
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I'm retired.  I wear Jeans and T shirt every day.  Different ones, but still jeans and T shirt.  Winter forces me to wear a sweat shirt over the T shirt.

I guess you might say that I'm living his dream.  

Frankly, as long as I can cover my CCW I'm good to go.  I have no one to impress, and I impress no one.  My wife doesn't complain so 'F' it!  I do what pleases me and my wife.  My kids accept me and appear to like me.  I'm good with it!

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"Carlsen said he hoped applying the idea to his own life would help solve his decision fatigue — a psychology term that refers to the exhaustion that comes from making too many decisions."

 

Decision Fatigue? Looks like that didn't kick in when he decided on those tattoos. Is that a two legged fox on his right forearm? 

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Is life really this hard? 

Does it really take an energy draining level of effort to deal with dirty dishes?  If they need washing, wash them! 

How much coffee to drink? How about a coffee cup full? Society's suggested size. Why reinvent the wheel?

What to wear? Wear the next shirt in line hanging in your closet. Problem solved. 

What to eat? Eat what sounds good to you.

This article feels like some kind of snowflake training manual.

As for "the uniform", is this a big deal?

I spent a substantial number of years of my life wearing blue jeans, a white T-shirt, All-Stars, and, when needed, the same leather jacket I've had since high school  (Yeah, I know, I looked like an extra from Grease minus the hairdo). It didn't take nine months of research to come up with: shirt, pants, shoes, and a jacket.

I've had a touch more variety for the past 20 years, but not much.  But, in either case, I'm pretty sure it doesn't warrant a news article nor is it a necessity to combat the dreaded "decision fatigue".

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32 minutes ago, TX OMFS said:

Slow news day up there, eh?

I wear the same underwear everyday. Not a uniform, the same ones. Can I get an article about my ingenious idea?

I've noticed the slow news up here. Minnesota gets a little crazy when the days are short and the weather gets cold. Slow/No news is good news as far as I'm concerned.

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I really don't get how this is a big deal.

I have two laundry baskets.  One is clean and one is dirty.  Pants are all the same, shirts are completely interchangeable, a couple different colors, but I could care less what color my shirt is.  When the clean basket is near empty, the dirty one goes into the wash.  

Basically, I do the exact same thing as this guy, only I don't make any type of deal out of it.

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Quote
To clarify, Carlsen is not wearing the same clothes every day, but the same outfit.
 
His uniform consists of five pants, nine t-shirts, four sweaters, 18 boxers and 12 socks as well as four different pairs of shoes and two different belt buckles.

That sounds pretty much like everybody else does it, just with an extra layer of pretense.

 

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Even if he wore the same set of clothes for one year, Jack Reacher does it in the movies, you wash everything before going to bed and hang it up to dry, put it back on in the morning.  But then Jack Reacher is living off his pension and doesn't have to work for a living anymore.  

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1 minute ago, janice6 said:

He's available to tell others how to live their life, but has troubles even making decision on his clothes.  ...

I've met several people in this new crop of "life coaches". 

None of them would I want to go to for expert advice.

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