One of the very first decisions we have to make each and every day is what we are going to wear. Some people might plan ahead and choose an outfit the night before. Some people have a specific uniform they are required to wear for school or work. For the rest of us, it’s often something we decide in the morning.

Looking at a closet full of options can be overwhelming. As much as we like variety, sometimes we can’t help but wonder if there’s an easier way.

There is. It’s call a uniform. Now, hear me out.

Yes, some schools have uniforms and so do some jobs, but not all uniforms have to include the company logo or khaki pants. What if you got to choose your uniform? What if you simply decided to choose an outfit that is comfortable and makes you feel like you look good, and then you wore that outfit every single day?

Some Very Successful People Wear a Uniform

Perhaps you haven’t thought about it, but some of the most successful people choose to wear uniforms. Maybe you haven’t thought about it as a uniform before because it’s something each person chose, and it’s not exactly the same as what any of their co-workers are wearing. Here are some examples.

• Richard Branson wears Levis and a white shirt every single day.
• Mark Zuckerburg often wears a gray t-shirt.
• Steve Jobs famously wore a black turtleneck and jeans.
• Barack Obama only wears suits that are gray or blue.

Why Do Successful People Decide to Wear the Same Thing Every Day?

A surface level answer would be to say that they don’t care about fashion or that they need a stylist. All of these men have money and could easily wear whatever they want, yet they want to keep their wardrobe simple.

The real reason so many very successful people decide to wear a uniform is that it helps prevent decision fatigue. We all have so many decisions to make every single day that not having to decide what to wear helps keep their brains sharp for the decisions that really matter.

Mark Zuckerberg explained, “I really want to clear my life to make it so that I have to make as few decisions as possible about anything except how to best serve this community.”

Most people make an average of 35,000 decisions each day. We can eliminate some of those decisions by wearing a uniform.

Can Women Wear a Uniform?

You may have noticed that all of our examples were of men, but that doesn’t mean that women can’t wear a uniform. For example, an interior designer named Susan Sorokanich wore the same outfit every single day for decades. Sorokanich chose a boatneck shirt and skinny jeans. She chose the outfit because it made her “feel polished and put together.” It was also easy to dress up or down by adding a few accessories. She would occasionally wear a pair of shorts or a pair of black pants instead of the jeans, but she pretty much stuck to the exact same outfit every day.

Then there’s Matilda Kahl. She’s an art director in New York. One Monday she decided that she’d had enough of making outfit decisions every single day. She wrote about her experience for Harper’s Bazarr. Kahl explained that she was running late for work because of her indecision about what to wear for work. When she finally left, she was running late and still unhappy with her outfit choice. She explained, “The frustration I felt walking into that meeting late remained with me. Should it really be this hard? I knew my male colleagues were taken seriously no matter what they wore—and I highly doubted they put in as much sartorial time and effort as I had. But gender issues aside, I needed to come up with a solution to simplify this morning struggle.”

That’s when Kahl decided to wear the exact same thing every day. We don’t mean that she actually wore the very same clothes day after day. She bought multiples of the same outfit. She bought “15 silk white shirts and a few black trousers. For a little personal detail, I remembered my mother loved to put bows in my hair as kid, so I chose to add a custom-made black leather rosette around my neck. Done.”

To hear more about Kahl’s experience wearing a uniform to work every day, watch the video below.

Experimenting With a Uniform

Perhaps it’s worth experimenting for two weeks to see if life seems easier when wearing a uniform. Two female employees at Fast Company decided to do just that. They agreed to wear a uniform of their choosing. One wore the uniform for 2 weeks and the other for 6 weeks. In both cases, nobody even noticed that they were wearing the same outfit every day. Nobody.

After the experiment, one employee decided to go back to switching up her wardrobe on a daily basis. The other employee found that the experiment was very helpful. Now, whenever she’s in a hurry and doesn’t know what to wear, she falls back on the uniform she wore for several weeks. She knows that her former uniform is perfect for every situation.

The men and women in these examples chose uniforms that consisted of neutral colors like black, white and gray. If you find a neutral uniform boring, you could try adding accessories.

Do you struggle deciding what to wear in the morning? Would creating a uniform to wear every day make your life easier? Does it surprise you that so few people even notice when someone wears the same outfit every single day?