I've never worked in an office. I've always worked for myself. I've always made my own schedule and determined the rhythm of my day.
When the coronavirus hit in early 2020, everyone's work changed. Suddenly, people were working from home. Almost everyone I knew asked me for advice. Adjustment method. How to deal with it. How not to lose your mind. How to stay productive. There's one thing I told everyone. It's important to dress appropriately when working from home.
Would you still dress properly if there was no one to dress you properly?Will you become sloppy when there is no one to stop you from being sloppy? ?
Working from home can be great. You don't have to fight endless traffic every morning. You can work comfortably in the corner of your kitchen. There's no need to be constantly on guard and trying to sneak around one cultural landmine after another.
You are free to work whenever you want. You are free to look like a slob. There is no need to wear a jacket or tie. You don't have to wear a collared shirt.
Honestly, you don't even need to wear a shirt. In theory, you could get all your work done just by lying in bed naked. You can also start ordering all your food without going to the supermarket. You might end up living in your pajamas after all. Every hour, every day. It's all the same.
Slowly, very slowly, you become a recluse. Everything is easier at home, so you leave the house less. Your work is there. Food can be delivered there. Your bed is there. And wearing pajamas makes life so much more comfortable. Ah, isn't it nice not having to wear anything?
“I don't really feel like getting dressed today.”
The details of this trajectory are extreme, but in general it looks like this: One thing leads to another, and another, and another. It can happen to anyone, but it most commonly happens to people who are thrown headlong into WFH. For people who are used to a life of working in an office with external expectations imposed on them, the freedom of working from home can have dire consequences.
Dressing properly for working from home is a simple act that can help forestall many potential problems. Much of the regression that occurs when working from home is due to being stuck at home. I don't want to leave the house because I feel like trash. It's a vicious cycle. On the other hand, if you look good, you will want to leave the house, so you will leave the house. It's a virtuous cycle.
Dressing properly when working from home can go a long way in increasing your productivity. In theory, you could do all your work from bed. In reality, that won't happen. You won't be as productive if you're in your pajamas. You can't be that nervous in bed, wearing a hoodie, unshowered and uncared for. That won't happen. All of that dulls your mind. And it definitely dulls your spirit, if not your observable mind. You may be doing well on paper, but in reality, your uptime is at most 75%. That just happens to be enough.
Working from bed looking like a street urchin simply makes you less effective. When you dress with purpose, your mind becomes sharper. You may not be dressing up for someone else. After all, you're working from home, but you're still dressing up for work. Dressing for yourself is also important. That's good for you.
When you work from home for an extended period of time, you run the risk of your life blending into one indistinguishable mass. Your personal life merges with your professional life. Your work day turns into your personal day. You lose all distinction and feel like you are always working and never resting.
Or you may feel like you're not doing any work at all. Or maybe you're just stuck in this strange no man's land forever. Whatever it is, you don't feel right. You lose your distinction and slip into a worse version of who you want to be.
Dressing properly when working from home can help solve this problem. Personal and professional life cannot be distinguished in space, so they must be aesthetically distinct. Clothes can differentiate between work time and private time. Even when you don't have to go out, dressing up for work makes work special, which in turn makes your life outside of work special.
Wear loafers when you're at work and camp mocks when you're not. Wear a sport coat when you're at work and a sweater when you're not. Wear your OCBD when you're at work and a polo shirt when you're not. Wear a tie when you're at work, and take it off when you're not. Please make some distinction.
It doesn't mean you have to wear too many suits or anything. Just add something that makes work feel like work. It doesn't have to be grand, but it has to be something. Those little things, repeated over and over again, help break up the day. This will help prevent everything from mixing together and forming an amorphous mass. It will help you stay sane and be your best self.
WFH means freedom. And freedom is revealing. It's a double-edged sword. When we are free, we are allowed to rise and fall. It's up to us. No one is making us do anything. We are in control. No one is going to make you dress properly for WFH. No one is going to make you care. In a deeper sense, WFH reveals who aspires to higher things and who falls to lower things.
Would you still dress properly if there was no one to dress you properly?Will you become sloppy when there is no one to stop you from being sloppy? ?
Although it may be uncomfortable to grapple with these questions at first, they can ultimately be encouraging and energizing. Working from home gives us the opportunity to dress well because we want to, not because someone else made us. In an age of ultimate freedom, choosing to dress intentionally means choosing sanity – choosing to do what is better for you because you care about yourself. is the same as That's what dressing well for WFH means. It keeps us sane and in better shape.
