Throughout our lives, we learn that what we wear affects the first impression we create and the way others react to our presence. Mostly, people see clothes as a means to express their personality. They rarely take into account the countless ways their attire can affect and change their behavior.
Can your clothes affect your success at work? Can it make you more productive when working from home? And what about becoming more successful when playing Everygame poker games online?
Let's take a look at how your choice of clothes can change your life, and maybe you will be able to learn some useful tips to turn into a more productive poker player!
Clothes, Success, and Everything in Between
First Impressions
Over the years, multiple studies tried to determine how long it takes for someone to form a first impression, and the answers vary. Studies say it takes anywhere between a millisecond to 30 seconds to form an opinion about a stranger.
And since there is so little time for us to try and influence someone's opinion of us, we rely on our looks to do the job for us. People use their clothes to create a professional or trustworthy impression, to look sharp or laid back. The image you project will determine whether people will take you seriously or not, affecting most interpersonal relationships.
There are rules to how we should dress when going to work, as our clothes are essentially a tool we use for nonliteral communication.
Dressing Up for Remote Work
But for many years, nobody paid attention to the effects our attire has on our thought process and mood. But in the last decade, remote work became more and more acceptable. Therefore, researchers began studying the effects of the way we dress while working from home.
In 2021, 55% of businesses around the world offered the option to work remotely. In general, 18% of telecommuter businesses allowed workers to remain home full-time, and they reported a 77% growth in productivity.
So, many people were very happy to remain home and avoid the extra time and effort it takes to commute to an office. And most importantly – people enjoyed staying in their PJs for days on end.
And for a while, it worked. People had fun attending meetings, composing documents, and playing poker online professionally without changing out of their T-shirts and sweatpants. However, most people can't keep up this behavior for a long time without allowing it to affect their performance.
The term "enclothed cognition" explains it all. It is a term coined by Hajo Adam and Adam D. Galinsky in a 2012 study, which means that the clothes we wear affect our brain in terms of how we think and feel. In the study, people who wore formal clothes performed better and were more focused on their tasks.
In a later study, researchers found that dressing formally encouraged abstract thinking, looking at the big picture, and reaching the right conclusions.
Those findings support the theory that the way you dress can affect the way you see yourself, the way you act and think.
Tips for Working and Playing Poker at Home
Taking into account everything you now know about the connection between your attire and your performance, what can you do to be as productive as possible while staying at home? Whether you work remotely or try to turn into a professional poker player, you need to be able to be as sharp and as focused as possible.
Here are a few things to pay attention to when you pick out an outfit for a day you spend indoors:
- Pick out clothes you would only wear to work and avoid clothes that you'd prefer wearing when hanging out and relaxing at home.
- Make sure the clothes are comfortable yet practical.
- Change out of your "work" clothes the minute you're done for the day to create clear boundaries between business and pleasure.
In Conclusion
If you take your poker career seriously and you want to increase your ability to focus and be more professional as you play, dress accordingly.