5'11" and the length problems in professional dressing are a specific unsolved problem in my life

5'11" here, traditional finance environment. The casual-tall stuff is mostly figured out, I know my denim brands, I'm at peace with maxi dresses functioning as midis.

Professional dressing is where it keeps falling apart.

Suit jacket: the sleeve is fine or the body is fine. Both is a myth. Trousers: either a correct fit in the waist with a short inseam, or a 34" inseam with a waist that does something strange. Professional dresses: read correct in a length that's technically appropriate but puts more leg in the room than I want for client meetings.

I've tried every tall retailer. I've tried tailoring which helps, at cost. I'm looking for brands or frameworks that people in here have actually tested at 5'9"+, specifically for professional contexts. Specific answers only; "have you tried long tall Sally" is a thing I've already tried.

I want to be clear that I love my mother and she dresses fine. She's 67 and she has a very specific palette (cream, dove grey, a sort of dusty navy, occasional camel) and a very specific silhouette (loose, draped, layered). It works on her.

I am 39. I just realized that my dialed-in capsule, after two rounds of 333 and a lot of "refinement," is functionally the SAME palette and silhouette as my mother's wardrobe. Cream. Dove grey. The navy. Some camel. All loose, all layered.

I had this realization at brunch on Sunday. We sat down across from each other and I noticed we were dressed almost identically (cream knit, soft taupe trousers, the long cardigan that women her age and women my age both apparently default to when capsule-ing into the void). She laughed and said "oh we match" and I laughed and inside I was thinking, when did this happen.

Here's what I think went wrong. 333 punishes color and pattern by default because they're harder to make work across 33 items. And "refinement" is a word the capsule community uses for converging on a quieter and quieter palette over time. The natural endpoint of refinement is your mother's closet. Or it was for me anyway.

I'm not trying to dress younger than I am, I want to be clear. I'm trying to dress like a 39 year old version of me, not a 67 year old version of my mother. Those should look different and they currently don't.

Has anyone refined their way into the same trap and clawed back out? The fix can't just be "add a bright sweater," I tried that last fall and it sat on the rack for 4 months because nothing in the rest of the capsule plays with it.

The best time to, “plant a tree,” was and has always been TODAY.

Why?

The sooner a habit takes root the sooner you get to enjoy the results it brings.

If you don’t like what the orchard of your life has been bearing so far, things like:

• Crushing debt.
• Crippling depression.
• A body you hate seeing in the mirror.

Burn down the orchard.

Plant a new one.

When I decided to finally take my life into my own hands at age 27, these were the habits that I started compounding that made all the difference.

Habit #1: Start saying, “Today,” instead of “Tomorrow.”

A few days before my 30th birthday I was hit with this massive surge of regret that I had wasted some of the best years of my life because I kept saying,

“Oh don’t worry you have time.”

What I didn’t realize though was that by constantly saying that I squandered damn near a decade of my life.

“We can go to the gym tomorrow, you have time.”

“We can start saving for retirement tomorrow, you have time.”

And by the time I realized I DIDN’T actually have time all of my colleagues were far ahead of me in the game of life. After that I realized:

Procrastination is the habit of saying, “I’ll do it tomorrow.”

Discipline is the habit of saying, “I’ll do it today.”

The results you get out of life are exactly where the work is and if the work is always in tomorrow then so will your results. When I decided to start insisting, “NO. I’LL DO IT TODAY,” did I finally start getting the things I’d always wanted.

If you want to get start getting results, replace the habit of delaying delaying delaying with the habit of taking action. It is THE most important habit you will ever build.

Habit #2: Automatically investing 12.5% of each paycheck.

In my 31 years walking this Earth I’ve read hundreds of finance books, consumed thousands of hours of podcasts, and gone to more seminars than I can recall and out of all of that learning only ONE financial tip stands out.

Are you ready?

It’s this:

Your life should be exciting, your finances should be boring.

The key to financial success isn’t obsessing over the latest stocks, bonds, and day to day news it’s setting up your finances ONCE when you get hired, investing automatically each paycheck, and forgetting about it.

Translation:

Build the habit of setting and forgetting your finances.

Step 1: open two bank accounts.

One account for day to day expenses and one exclusively for your future.

Step 2: Every time you get a new job automatically commit 12.5% of your income to the second account.

Step 3: Set up an account on an investing platform like Webull, Vanguard, or Robinhood to automatically invest that 12.5% into a low cost index fund like VOO, VT, or VXUS.

Step 4: Pay your taxes (from dividends) on it each year, then forget about it.

Why?

You’re going to keep working, regardless.

When you automatically schedule your growth first it allows you to benefit from the passage of time. If you blink and it’s been 10, 20, or 30 years and guess what?

Your account has exploded.

Habit #3: Scheduling regular time to live, like actually do something you’ve been waiting for.

I’m a firm believer in the 80/20 rule.

As in 80% of your time, attention, and money should be allocated towards your future while 20% of your time, attention, and money should be spent indulgently today.

Why?

If all you do is spend spend spend, when your future comes around you will be destitute, depressed, and diseased.

If all you do however is save, save, save, when your future comes around you will die and your ancestors will blow all of your money on gambling, throwing massive parties, or giving it to their ex wife.

I’ve seen this shit.

Neither is a particularly good outcome I’d say.

That’s why I recommend spending MOST of your time, money, and effort building a bright future for you BUT you need to also set aside some of that to enjoy today.

• Think about a city, country, or location you’ve always wanted to visit before you die — plan to see it this year and start saving for it today.
• Think about a girl you’ve always wanted to ask out, imagine you just got told you might have a year left to live — go ask her out. (This actually happened to me.)
• Think about something you’d regret not doing if it got shut down tomorrow — The Starbucks reserve in Seattle (closed).

You’ll find that when you regularly start scheduling time to live you no longer feel like your life is spent on hold you’re able to make progress AND live at the same time.

This habit making living, and grinding a lot more tolerable.

Habit #4: Setting a regular sleep window.

Why do parents make their kids go to bed on time?

Because they want them to get enough sleep to grow, have energy, and stay healthy in the face of whatever life throws at them.

If you’d make sure your kid goes to bed on time so they stay healthy, happy, and productive, why not do the same for yourself?

When I started setting a regular sleep window, a sleep schedule I keep including the weekends my sleep went from guaranteed trash to blissed out on the regular.

It’s literally that simple.

Why?

When you get used to sleeping at the same time your body preconditions your body to be ready for sleep by a certain hour, AND allows you to start waking up right on time.

When you sleep irregularly it’s like a resturant being unprepared for lunch and dinner rushes because they never know when they’re going to occur.

Habit #5: Weight Training & Getting 7500 Steps a Day

The human body was designed for two things.

Moving & carrying heavy things.

Research has actually established that the mere act of lifting something heavy makes people happier.

When you go a day without lifting, or moving extensively your body feels like a dog without a walk. You’re crabby, you’re irritable, and you start lashing out when all you really need is some activity.

Want to know the best part about all of this?

When you start using your body the way nature intended it to be used the only side effect is bigger muscles, lower weight, and improved biomarkers such as blood sugar, cholesterol, and even testosterone levels.

If you do not schedule time to workout, you’re scheduling time for the hospital, which would you prefer?

To get started on this I recommend just scheduling 15 minutes a day each morning for a short walk, ideally listening to an audiobook or a podcasts and each month try to add another 15 minute walk here and there.

Pretty soon you’ve lost a ton of weight, gotten a ton of steps feel more energetic, happier as well.

In regards to the gym same idea.

Habit #6: Cultivating Social Skills & Fulfilling Relationships

You want to know the secret to a happy life?

For the worlds longest study on happiness throughout the lifespan the people who reported having the happiest lives all had one thing in common:

They had deep, loving, relationships with those around them.

They became best friends with their colleagues.

They had loving spouses.

They got to know their neighbors.

When people invested in cultivating and maintaining their relationship is throughout their lives as they got older their happiness continued to increase.

Point being?

If you want to start compounding your happiness what you really need to be doing is socializing regularly and keeping the people you genuinely enjoy around for life.

When I wanted to do this my all I had to do were a few things:

A. Read books on social skills.

B. Practice those social skills on strangers 15 minutes a day.

C. When I met someone I clicked with and genuinely enjoyed talking to I scheduled hangouts with them every 1–2x a month to spend time cultivating our relationship.

Now I have 6 deep friendships I hangout with regularly in addition to my girlfriend and I’m exponentially happier than I was when I was lonely and self-isolating.

If my autistic, adhd, single mother having ass can do it what excuse do you have?

Habit #7: Scheduling 30 minutes a day for Kaizen

What’s the most respected car brand in the world?

Toyota.

Why?

Their products are far superior than everyone competing with them and the world knows it.

What’s the secret to their dominance?

Kaizen.

Every single day Toyota is examining how it’s processes work and when employees suggest ways to improve their product executives actually listen to them.

After decades of constant daily improvement they’ve gotten far ahead from everyone else in the pack.

If you want to learn a skill, just start.

If you want to MASTER the skill, stay consistent.

If you want to DOMINATE the skill, improve daily.

I learned how to socialize 15 minutes of awkward conversations a day, I learned how to lift 1-hr of piss workouts a day, I learned how to cook one burnt meal at a time.

Point being is each time I had a bad outcome I studied it and did better the next day.

To add more kaizen into your life steal a page from my book:

• Each morning schedule the first 30 mintues of the day to learning.
• As soon as you learn apply what that was.
• Reflect on what you’ll do better tomorrow that evening.

Done over a long enough time period you WILL become the best in the field.

Habit #8: Regularly removing your worst habits.

Compounding is like a gun.

It’s not good or bad it depends on what you do with it.

When compound things like meal prepping, automatic savings, or daily learning the long term result is happiness.

When you compound things like binge eating, impulse spending, and daily hedonism the long term results is depression.

While compounding the right habits is good.

Sometimes the best thing you could possibly do is simply to STOP compounding your worst possible habit.

Want to know the secret to doing this?

Ask yourself the following question:

“If I had to choose a habit to NEVER start if I could go back in time what would it be?”

• Scrolling?
• Drinking?
• Doordashing?

Whatever it is if you want to improve your life as fast as possible, it starts by removing your heaviest chain.

Habit #9: Sacrificing Today for Tomorrow.

Good habits are like planting a seed.

If you eat a seed today, you can’t plant it for a larger harvest tomorrow so you are always faced with those two choices.

Do I eat today (indulging) to be hungry tomorrow.

Do I plant today (suffering) to be full tomorrow.

If you want a big orchard in one year’s time literally all you have to do is ask yourself each morning, “do I want joy today or tomorrow?”

When you choose to do the hard thing despite how annoying it might be as time passes you’ll slowly start to see your orchard begin to rise. And here’s the thing you don’t even have to plant that much each day.

When I got started the only thing I could commit to was writing mantras for 5 minutes a day.

Now I spend the first 4 hours of each morning doing everything from reading, to meal prepping, to working out.

Every orchard starts with a small seed.

Just commit to doing something for future you daily then keep doing it each day no matter how small.

Bad workouts are just as important as good ones.

Bad conversations are just as important as good ones.

Bad spending days are just as important as good ones.

You don’t need to be perfect but you do need to commit to consistency, just keep going and one day you’ll get what you deserve.

P.S.

And before anyone says it I spent a little over 4 hours writing this shit over the last 2 days so I'd appreciate it if you actually read the post before swearing that it's AI just because it's well formatted, my alternative was submitting a massive wall of text. Which would you prefer?

I’ve been thinking about this lately. I used to spend time on things without planning it. Reading something random, messing around with music, going out, just doing things for the sake of it.

Now that time is still there, but it gets filled differently.

I’ll finish work and think I’ll finally do something I enjoy. Then I pick up my phone for a minute. Just to check something. And that turns into scrolling. By the time I’m done, I don’t feel like starting anything else.

The strange part is I don’t feel like I’ve lost interest in my hobbies. I still want to do them. It just feels harder to start.

Earlier it didn’t feel like a decision. Now it does. And the phone is always easier.

I’ve tried telling myself I’ll scroll less or do hobbies after a break, but it usually ends the same way. Not really sure what the fix is yet. Just noticing it more now.

 If anyone else feels the same or has found a way around it.