“There’s a restaurant I want to try, but going alone feels weird.” “I want to see that movie. Maybe I’ll wait until someone is free.” “I want to travel, but solo travel? No chance.” “A museum alone? What would I even do there?”
Without noticing, another person’s calendar can become the timetable for your own life.
Going out with friends is great. That is not the problem. The problem appears when the absence of a companion automatically cancels something you genuinely wanted to do.
The goal is not to make you love solitude. It is to add one more option: “I can do it alone, too.” You can go with friends. You can go alone. You can also decide to stay home. Having all three options gives you more range.
1. “I can’t go alone” is usually several costs stacked together
A. The social-visibility cost
People may avoid public leisure activities alone because they expect negative judgments about their social connectedness. Ratner and Hamilton also found that people can overestimate how much their enjoyment depends on having a companion.[1]
Your imaginary audience may contain 100 people. The actual people in the café are usually busy with their own coffee.
B. The decision-load cost
With another person, you can share “Where next?”, “What should we eat?”, and “Should we leave?” Social Baseline Theory proposes that humans use other people as resources that can reduce perceived risk and effort.[4]
Alone, you become planning, navigation, accounting, decision-making, and commentary. You, Inc. — headcount: one.
C. The stimulation cost
Some people get bored quickly without conversation. Research on intentional “thinking for pleasure” shows that deliberately generating enjoyable thoughts can be cognitively demanding, and simple thinking aids can make it easier and more enjoyable.[5]
Not everyone can be told, “Entertain yourself with your own brain for two hours,” and instantly thrive.
D. The sharing cost
Shared experiences can intensify emotion. Feeling that something is “missing” when you cannot share it is understandable. But if an experience cannot happen unless it is shared live, other people’s availability becomes a bottleneck.
2. “Introverts can do it, extroverts can’t” is too simple
In two diary studies, Nguyen and colleagues found no evidence that introversion predicted self-determined motivation to spend time alone. What consistently mattered was dispositional autonomy — regulating behavior according to one’s own interests and values.[3]
A 2025 study of solitary flow also found that extraversion alone did not determine the outcome; an autotelic personality, a tendency to become deeply engaged in activities for their own sake, mattered too.[6]
So: Extroverts can enjoy solo activities. Introverts can still get bored alone. A more useful question is whether you can choose an activity yourself and extract reward from the activity itself.
3. Strong solo players generate their own content
A person who spends three hours in a museum is usually not staring at one object for three hours.
Look → “What is this?” → read → search → compare with the past → connect it to something else → make a ridiculous analogy → joke about it → notice a new question
The outside world supplies one object. The mind turns it into five or ten pieces of content. With great respect, call this the self-content-generation gremlin.
Practice five questions:
- What is this?
- Why is it like this?
- How is it different elsewhere or in the past?
- What would I do differently?
- What is the one-line joke or summary?
A castle stops being “a castle” and becomes: “How did they stack this stone?”, “Why is that opening there?”, “Attacking this place would be awful,” and “These stairs are siege weapons for knees.” Now being alone is suddenly busy.
4. Identify your specific “I can’t go alone” type
① Visibility type
“I feel embarrassed being seen alone.” Start with places where solo presence is normal: walking, shopping, cafés, cinemas, museums, libraries.
② Decision-fatigue type
“I hate deciding everything myself.” Decide only three things in advance: first destination, latest return time, maximum budget. Your weekend does not need a national-infrastructure-grade itinerary.
③ Boredom type
“If nobody is talking, I get bored.” Turn your phone into an exploration device: maps, search, notes, photos, official guides. A phone can act as external memory, navigator, and research assistant — an everyday form of cognitive offloading.[7]
Carry a power bank. A solo trip beginning at 3% battery is not tourism. It is survival mode.
④ Sharing type
“It doesn’t feel complete unless I tell someone.” Separate experience from sharing. Take three photos, write one note, and tell someone later.
⑤ Anxiety/logistics type
“I might get lost. I won’t understand the system. What if something happens?” Lower the difficulty: nearby café → cinema → half-day outing → nearby day trip.
5. The solo-action tutorial: start at Level 0
Lv.0 — Purposeful solo task
Convenience store, shopping, takeaway, an errand. You do not even have to enjoy being alone. Just travel alone and complete the task.
Lv.1 — Stay for 15 minutes
Café, food court, park. You may leave after 15 minutes. Remove the rule that says “If I did not have fun, I failed.”
Lv.2 — Activities where being alone is normal
Cinema, museum, gallery, library. Conversation is not required, and everyone else is looking at the screen or exhibits rather than auditing your social life.
Lv.3 — Eat alone
Start with counter seating, casual restaurants, or food courts. Use environments whose “user interface” already works well for solo customers.
Lv.4 — Half-day solo outing
Choose only one or two nearby places. The lesson is moving at your own pace.
Lv.5 — Solo day trip
Choose one main objective: see a museum, see the sea, eat one local specialty. Leave blank space around it.
6. Do not define success as “I had an amazing time”
Beginners often set an absurd grading standard: “I went alone, therefore I must have an incredible day.”
No. The first success condition is: You went. You came back. Done.
You may leave early. You may buy nothing. You may change your mind. Going home counts. “This was not for me today” is still data.
Research distinguishes self-determined solitude from solitude that feels forced. They are not psychologically identical.[2] The goal is not an endurance test for loneliness. It is to return choice to yourself.
7. Going with friends is not always a strict upgrade
Friends add conversation, shared emotion, reassurance, and division of labor. Those benefits are real. But there is also the interest-speed mismatch.
One person wants to read every sign in a castle. The other person is not interested.
“Tower confirmed!” “Next!” “Exit found!” “New record!”
CASTLE ANY% SPEEDRUN.
Nobody has to be wrong. Their viewing speeds are simply different. You can enter together, explore separately, meet at the exit in an hour, and eat together afterward. Being close friends does not guarantee identical seconds-per-exhibit.
8. A smartphone can become your external solo-action OS
- Maps: navigation
- Search: research
- Notes: memory
- Booking/tickets: reception
- Payment: accounting
- Photos: records
- Translation: interpreter
- Messaging: safety net
Research describes this kind of outsourcing as cognitive offloading.[7]
Give You, Inc. (one employee) a smartphone contractor. And the power bank is not an employee perk. It is business continuity planning.
9. The final goal is not to become “a person who prefers being alone”
Solo competence is not the ability to stop needing people. It is the ability to separate your action window from other people’s availability.
You want to go today. Your friend is free next week.
Before: “Then I wait until next week.”
After: “I can go alone today.” “I can do something different with my friend next week.” “I am tired, so I can go home today.”
All are valid. Same city. Different ownership of time.
10. Summary: train the small circuit that moves you, not “loneliness resistance”
Start with: choose one purpose → go alone for a short time → use your phone to reduce decision load → ask one question about what you see → leave if it is boring.
Eventually, “I can’t go because nobody is available” can become, “Want to come? If not, I can still go.”
This is not about reducing friendship. It is not about worshipping solitude. It is about not placing your life on standby until the opening hours of your destination happen to match someone else’s free time.
And if you find one “What is that?” while you are out alone, you have already started. Search it. Compare it. Make fun of it.
Soon a small self-content-generation gremlin may move into your brain. Warning: if it grows too strong, your museum visits may become three times longer. No warranty is provided.
