Uniform

The power of the uniform!

I recently listened to a podcast where the hosts talked for a bit about adopting a uniform. The idea behind a uniform is that it takes out some of the decision making we do every morning by reducing the number of options: if we basically wear the same thing every day, there are fewer decisions to make about getting dressed, which means we’re not drawing down our cognitive resources early in the day.

I’ve actually been thinking about this idea lately, although it wasn’t until I heard the podcast that I assigned it the label “uniform”. Since I largely work at home this year, I mostly wear one of two outfits: jeans, a t-shirt, and a cardigan; or leggings and a sweater. There’s a bit more variety in my teaching outfits when I’m not on sabbatical, but I’ve come to realize that I’m most comfortable in a “uniform” of a dress and a cardigan. And on non-teaching days I tend to wear jeans, a nice shirt, and a cardigan. (I guess I love my cardigans!) I’ve been thinking about paring down my wardrobe to the pieces I wear most often and letting go of the rest to reflect the reality of how I dress. (Do I really need 8 pairs of dress pants if I only wear 2 of them on a semi-regular basis?) Of course I haven’t actually done anything about this yet, but the idea intrigues me.

This got me thinking about other “uniforms” I’ve adopted in my life to make my life easier and remove some of the decision fatigue:

• Breakfast. I go through phases on what I eat for breakfast on weekdays, but I realized that I basically switch between two meals. Right now those are a smoothie; or eggs, avocado, and spinach on toast. Given that mornings are chaotic trying to get myself and the kiddos ready for the day, it really helps to just decide “sweet or savory?” and go from there.
• Moodle course pages. Moodle (our course management system) can be overwhelming for students and faculty alike (so many boxes! so many links! so many things vying for attention!). About 4-5 years ago I came up with a “template” for my course Moodle pages that I’ve been using ever since. I tweak it a bit every year, but the overall structure remains the same: content boxes in the same places, content each week organized into the same categories, etc. It’s one less thing I have to think about when putting course content together. And if students have taken a class with me before, they (in theory) know where to find everything associated with the class. Now, it would be SOOOOO nice if Moodle actually allowed me to save my “template” so that I didn’t have to re-invent the wheel every class, every term…..
• Comps (capstone) projects. Next year, all three of the Comps projects I’m supervising are academic civic engagement projects. Even though they involve very different campus/community partners, they all entail the same main tasks and have the same structure. This has made conceptualizing and planning the projects much easier, because I’m doing basically the same tasks, just with three different partners. In theory, this will also make managing the projects easier, because each team will be performing the same tasks, just at different times and in different contexts. Unusually for me, I also have a few project ideas on the back burner for next year — so the existence of this pattern makes it easier for me to generate project ideas, too.

What uniforms have you adopted in your own life? Do you wear a “uniform” in your day-to-day life?

Image source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:STS-133_Astrovan_pre-flight_photo.jpg

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