After much talk about digital transformation back home in Europe, with little that has been achieved in the past few years, suddenly everyone is thrown into a digital crash course. Thanks to Coronavirus and curfews in place, both adults and children are learning how to use digital tools to work from home or attend virtual schools.

I have to admit I was a bit surprised when I saw the many messages on social media from acquaintances and friends in Europe who all posted encouraging words and success stories about their first virtual team meetings via WebEx, Zoom, Skype, Google Hangout, Microsoft Teams and the like. Since I moved to Silicon Valley in 2001, virtual meetings and teleconferencing have been a part of my everyday life. This was the only way I could collaborate with colleagues on the other side of the globe. And then, in 2020, it seemed like a whole new experience to many who had been so fond of throwing around the buzzword ‘digital transformation‘.

Office versus Home Office

Since I have been self-employed for several years, my office is no longer bound to an office building. I can simply walk to my desk at home, or to the nearest café, and set up my workplace there. I refer to myself less as a homeworker and more as a coffee house writer.

In social media posts I noticed challlenges that naturally come to every home worker’s attention. At the very beginning, you first have to understand how to get the technology under control. Does the video work, can I be heard through the microphone, is there background noise, is the connection stable enough? Once this has been mastered, the concern for a suitable background, the lighting, the silence in front of yapping dogs, sneaking cats or children rushing into the room begins. Even make-up filters for Zoom have already been requested so that you don’t have to do anything yourself.

What should I wear?

And that immediately leads us to the question, “What should I wear?” It’s tempting to stay in your comfortable home outfit: an old T-shirt and sweatpants seem to be the preferred standard attire. Others are much more creative, and the husband of this Twitter user has made it an art to sit in front of the screen in a different eye-catching costume every day and cheer up his colleagues.

Enclothed Cognition

Anyone who expects home offices to be here for a longer period of time will sooner or later be faced with the decision to consciously choose their work-from-home attire. And this is where a new term can be helpful to make a proper decision. The term ‘enclothed cognition‘ was first coined in 2008 by two researchers at Northwestern University, Hajo Adam and Adam D. Galinsky.

Enclothed Cognition describes the systematic influence that clothing has on the psychological processes of the wearer.

Indeed, the researchers were able to see in their studies that the test subjects, who dressed as artists, tackled the tasks they were given more creatively. The same people, dressed in a doctor’s coat, literally role-played more seriously and with more authority.

We know this feeling of how clothes affect us from our own experience. We move differently in a suit and tie than in our sportswear. In comfortable pajamas we move differently than when we wear sexy underwear and lingerie. For a disco or clubbing night we dress differently and with different expectations and appearance than in the opera or in the football stadium. The clothes we wear put us in the right mood and we appear differently to others.

When working from home, it may be tempting to stay in your pajamas or sweatpants, but this choice of clothing can result for some in lower performance. Even though you are at home and working from home, the choice of clothes can indicate the transition from leisure to work time and the mindset can switch to a ‘work mode‘. You may want to try it out for yourself. Stay in comfortable sweatpants or pajamas for several days, and then on alternate days dress as if you were going to the office. Afterwards judge for yourself in which clothes you felt more productive.

I know it for myself. Whether I work from home, from a café or from an office, I always dress as if I were going to the office. Not a suit, but still a dress shirt, trousers, gilet or sweater. That’s how it works for me.

And today I also have the term for it: ‘enclothed cognition’. Humans and their minds can be quite funny and confusing.

This article was also posted in German.