For many people picking an outfit is an instinctual thing. Are they feeling blue or red, or neon yellow? Or sometimes it’s about what you’re doing for the day, who you are seeing and how long you will be out of the house (in Melbourne Australia, it can be sunny by eleven am and hailing by four- thirty pm so layers are a crucial thing at times).

I know that if I have to leave early in the morning the majority of the time is spent deciding on what I am going to wear, frankly it is the main reason why I am sometimes that extra five minutes late. When Uni is on, that desire to be creative and come up with all new different outfits kicks in and I am stood in front of my lovely wardrobe, convinced I have nothing to wear, treating it like some sort of jigsaw puzzle that will take up the next ten minutes. So, in the last week I have decided to plan my outfits the night before so that my morning routine makes me that little bit more organised.

This will come at no surprise, but it was so damn helpful. You become more rational in your thoughts in the morning and the overthinking pitfall that I would fall into never came up. There’s apparently this term in psychology called decision fatigue (if you can believe it) where we tire out our brains so much due to having to make so many decisions throughout the day (food being the biggest one). So to eliminate an everyday task like this can probably be really beneficial.

Apart from being that ten minutes ahead of schedule, I noticed that I was able to pinpoint why I would have those moments of indecision and annoyance. Here were the main ones.

1. I would worry that what I was wearing was too similar to what I had worn the day before (I have uni two days in a row each week).

2. As a habit I would wear a lot of black white or grey and often I would be concerned that I wasn’t putting in enough colour

3. When I did have colourful options there was also a little battle between comfort and colour. Not to say that none of the bright vibrant options weren’t comfortable at all, but just not as much as the black, grey, white t shirt type stuff.

Due to the fact that all three points had to do with my motivations for the clothes I wore all the time I decided that I needed to change my attitude about how I chose clothing. The first point reflects the fact that I didn’t want to have my classmates think I only owned two versions of clothing aka I was concerning myself with what those around me might think. The second and last points were that I didn’t have as many pieces of clothing that had both that colour and the comfort I was after or at least didn’t fit me as well as they should have.

I learned that I needed to look for some new things to wear that I genuinely liked and felt happy and comfortable in, as well as to appreciate what pieces I have and make an effort to rework them into my routine of clothing each week. After all fashion is something that should be enjoyable and not based on a concern of what other people will think. It’s really common to fall into that way of thinking but at the end of the day they’re your clothes and they’re for you.

So make them about you.

(And plan how you’ll do that the night before!)