THE SCIENCE BEHIND ZUCKERBERG WEARING THE SAME T-SHIRT EVERYDAY

Wearing the same T-shirt every day significantly improves your decision making.

The latest picture posted by Zuck broke the Internet. Again. But this time it wasn’t one about his cute daughter, it was just a rack of clothes.

So why did it get 1 million+ likes and 30.000 shares?

Because it shows the core of entrepreneurial spirit. As one of the most successful entrepreneurs on Earth, Zuckerberg has experienced firsthand that freeing up mental energy and resources is key to be productive.

It might be a small decision — but worrying about what to wear as the first thing in the morning is not a great way to start of the day. Your mind will kick off the day in a negative state, which should be avoided at all costs.

Can science back it up?

Neuroscientific research has shown that creating intentions, setting goals and making decisions all engage the same neural circuitry and engage the prefrontal cortex in a positive way.

Simply put: by making decisions you reduce worry and anxiety. Making decisions changes your perception of the world because finding solutions calms the limbic system. Relieving yourself from the anxiety of having to choose every day, puts your brain at ease.

The mental energy that is freed up from not making these small decisions will improve your ability to make tough decisions. Reducing the ‘noise’ in your life can have tremendous effects on your productivity — apart from wearing the same clothes every day, really successful people might also do some of the following things to increase their productivity:

• Fly private. No checking in, security or distractions from other passengers.
• Hiring a Personal Assistant to book flights, hotels, arrange meetings, transport etc…
• Eating the same dishes.
• Go to bed and get up at the same time every day.
• Write extensive to do lists.

Time is money

Your most important resource is not money, but time. There is only so much you can allocate each day. Just think about it: the 10 minutes of energy you spend on choosing your daily outfit could go into something else.

You could check emails, be halfway through your healthy breakfast or spend more time with your family. And if you are running a company or launching your startup you know by now that every ounce of energy counts.

“I’m in this really lucky position, where I get to wake up every day and help serve more than a billion people. And I feel like I’m not doing my job if I spend any of my energy on things that are silly or frivolous about my life”.

Distractions can wipe your short-term memory

If you add up all the small things you do every day you’ll quickly see that you are spending several hours doing unproductive things. Not only that — these small decisions put you off for much longer. A recent study found that a 15-second interruption can completely wipe your short term memory.

In the research 95% of the test population performed significantly worse in a test when they were interrupted shortly.

Zuckerberg summed up why he’s wearing the same T-Shirt every day in the quote below. He simply performs much better, just like Obama and Steve Jobs have said previously:

“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.”