Congratulations, you’ve just scored a remote gig. Time to put away the business casual clothes or uniforms and dust off the sweatpants and pajamas. One of the first things that usually springs to mind with regard to working from home is the ability to dress up however you’d like.
But are pajamas and sweatpants truly the best choice? While it’s definitely tempting to think from a comfort-first perspective, you may find that getting dressed in the morning has some extra benefits you didn’t consider.
Table of Contents
- Getting dressed contributes to a morning routine
- Getting dressed puts you in the proper mindset for work
- Getting dressed helps to save you from video meeting mishaps
- Should you get dressed to work from home? Yes.
Getting dressed contributes to a morning routine
Anyone who’s worked a traditional job can tell you about the frenzied time just before the start of a shift. For most people, this involves a routine of some sort. Wake up, brush your teeth, find some clothing, fix your hair, maybe grab some coffee, and head out the door.
It’s true that remote work doesn’t carry with it that panicked sort of “I need to leave in 5 minutes or I’ll hit traffic on the way to the office” mentality in the mornings, but there’s value in a routine nonetheless.
According to the Therapy Group of NYC, routines help us cope with change, create healthy habits, improve interpersonal relationships, and reduce stress.
Stress can obviously have some pretty big impacts on the way we perform day-to-day, from increasing burnout to leading to mental health issues down the road, not to mention its impact on your job.
With this in mind, getting dressed before your remote gig starts offers you an easy addition to your morning routine, which will continue to help you throughout the day.
Getting dressed puts you in the proper mindset for work
“Dress for the job you want” and “dress for success” are popular sayings not because they’re catchy, but because they’ve got some merit to them.
Think about it: you’re wrapping up your evening by slipping into some comfy pajamas. This little action is a signal to your brain that the hard part of the day is over, and that it’s time to relax. Do this often enough, and that association will be built in your mind.
Now picture that you’ve woken up in the morning, rubbed the sleep out of your eyes, and shambled straight to your computer. You’ve still got your pajamas on. Sure, they’re comfy, but they’re also not helping you ease your way out of sleep and relaxation mode and into work and productivity mode.
Unless you’re required to be on camera all day for your remote gig, you’re not going to have a supervisor checking your outfit out before you start work in your home office. You’re not going to have coworkers you need to worry about looking presentable for. It’s on you to have the accountability needed to make sure you’re ready to go.
The gist of this as it pertains to a mindset isn’t that you need to be donning a full suit in the mornings when you wake up, but that the action of actively changing out of what you wore to bed will help transition you more efficiently to a working mindset. It’s a sign to yourself that you’re entering a different phase of your day, and that will help you be more productive.
Getting dressed helps to save you from video meeting mishaps
At the start of the pandemic, video meeting mishaps were everywhere. In fact, it almost seemed as if nobody was safe. A mayor from Belgium was caught in his underwear during a video interview. A reporter from Good Morning America wasn’t safe either.
There are hundreds of stories like these, and even worse.
As somebody that’s now spent more time working from home than in any traditional work setup, I’ll be the first to tell you that video chats aren’t going anywhere. There’s a human element that can be missing from remote work, and video chats help to alleviate this. There’s value to tying a face to a name or chat bubble.
Even if you’re not worried about getting caught (literally) with your pants down, being dressed helps to save you from the surprise scramble that usually happens just before an unexpected video chat is sprung on you.
There’s nothing quite like a sudden Slack message requesting a video chat, or an unexpected client Zoom meeting that leaves you scrambling as fast as possible to make yourself look presentable before it starts.
Getting dressed for work, even though you’re working remote, helps to keep you prepared for things like video chat, and can help prevent you from becoming yet another (admittedly funny) mishap story.
Should you get dressed to work from home? Yes.
Whether you’re attempting to save yourself from a bad look during a video chat, setting up a routine to keep you mentally sharp and slightly less stressed, or attempting to get yourself into the proper mindset to get good work done, getting dressed in the morning will help you.
Don’t get me wrong, there are days when changing out of sweats or pajamas is a tricky task. And you know what? It’s ok to do it every now and then. Consider that the equivalent of your low-effort dressing for a day in a traditional workplace where things just aren’t going right that morning.
But just like you wouldn’t do that every day in a traditional workplace, don’t make it a habit in the virtual one either.
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