It might be tempting to don sweatpants and a t-shirt when you have remote work, but there are a range of benefits in dressing professionally even when you’re alone in your home office. How we choose to dress affects our emotional state of mind. Colors, fit, and material can trigger our body and mind to associate with work or lounge time. Our clothes also affect our mood which in turn affects how productive and focused we are on our work. Dressing professionally for remote work can put a person in “a better mental space.” Certain morning routines also give us time to prepare ourselves mentally for the day at hand. Self-care habits like brushing teeth and choosing a nice shirt to wear give us time to quiet our mind before the stress of meetings and deadlines.

Dress for Success

There is truth in the phrase, “dress for success,” as studies show that dressing formally opens cognition to more abstract, higher level thinking. Dressing professionally for remote work can especially help when you must attend online meetings. Most conference platforms offer participants a clear view of themselves on camera. This can be intimidating and distracting as we may fixate on how we look rather than how we are participating in the meeting. We must like or at least feel presentable in the outfits we choose and how we have cleaned up for the day. Feeling confident that we have dressed and presented ourselves as best as we can will help boost self-esteem and ease anxiety of how we are perceived. It can free up space to listen to other people in the meeting and not be distracted by self-image. Also, wearing certain clothes or colors might have symbolic meaning for an individual. Ask yourself, do you have a lucky shirt? A lucky color? For whatever reason, individuals associate certain pieces of clothing or colors to luck based on personal experiences. Feeling lucky can boost confidence, which makes us able to handle challenging work situations.

Keeping Routines

Getting dressed for work is a routine that helps a person transition from home time to work time. Without those cues, your mind and body might find it challenging to get into the right frame of mind for focused work. Vanessa Bohns, Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior at Cornell University’s ILR School suggests changing into work clothes at the start of the day to “cue a sense of being in serious work mode.” She explains that the change in sensation of new clothes will trigger body and mind to signal it’s time to work. Getting dressed for work is a habit that is tempting to break while working remotely. But, habits, while easy to break, are difficult to establish. Try to keep an office casual look even on days you don’t have online meetings. Routines lessen anxiety and stress. Keep to them.

Finally, what about the infamous work attire on top and casual on the bottom, which has become so popular with online meetings? Researchers are undecided on how that affects focus and cognition. Surely, there are studies being performed around it right now. In the meantime, just be sure that if you have a casual bottom or no bottoms, that you never stand up in front of the camera. That would be an embarrassment right up there with forgetting to turn a mic off during a bathroom break!