Alonement: Solitude Skills Practice
Turn time alone into a scheduled, planned, positive practice you look forward to
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- 90%
Alonement reframes solitude as a learnable set of 'Solitude skills' that sit opposite the social skills school actually teaches. The mechanism has four moving parts. First, scheduling: you block dedicated alone time in the calendar so it stops being the low-quality residue that fills gaps between work and relationships. Second, planning: you decide in advance what you'll do, because anticipation itself delivers wellbeing. Third, emotional regulation: a daily journaling or meditation practice so that when you're alone with your thoughts you can decompress rather than spiral. Fourth, balance: you anchor solitude against a known upcoming social connection, the adult version of a child knowing a caregiver is in sight. Practised together over weeks, these skills convert dreaded empty evenings into quality time you look forward to, and let you enter relationships from want rather than need.
Origin
Francesca Specter coined 'alonement' in January 2019 after a breakup, when she realised every social yes and every bad date was a way to flee her own company. She blogged her way through learning to spend time alone, then wrote the book Alonement.
Core principles
- 01Time alone is a skill, not a personality trait you either have or lack
- 02Solitude only becomes positive when it is intentional and planned
- 03Naming a thing (alonement) makes it real and worth scheduling
- 04You must be able to self-regulate emotions before solitude feels good
- 05Come to relationships from a place of want, not neediness
How to run it
- 1
Schedule the block
Put a named alonement block in your calendar every week, in advance, so solitude is a planned commitment rather than an accident of cancellation.
Pro tip Give it a colour and a name; naming it signals to your own mind that this is real and intentional.
- 2
Plan what you'll actually do
Decide the specifics ahead of time: the book, the meal, the film. The wellbeing benefit of anticipation starts well before the event itself.
Pro tip Keep a standing list of films, games or activities on your phone so a sudden free evening becomes an opportunity, not a void.
Watch out Unplanned solo time defaults to scrolling and feels lonely; the plan is what makes it quality time.
- 3
Build an emotional-regulation base
Establish a daily decompression habit such as journaling or a ten-minute meditation so you can sit with your own thoughts calmly.
Pro tip Do it first thing, before the day's noise, as a non-negotiable.
Watch out Without this you'll throw yourself into 'the pit of snakes that is your own mind' and avoid solitude at all costs.
- 4
Balance solo against social
Make sure a good social touchpoint is on the horizon so you can enjoy alone time from a place of security rather than isolation.
Pro tip Even a planned weekend call with a best friend is enough to ground a solo evening.
- 5
Practise being alone in public
Deliberately do things solo in public, starting with lower-stakes outings and building to a meal or the cinema alone.
Pro tip The cinema is cited by her audience as one of the purest forms of alonement; there's no social obligation and total immersion.
- 6
Reframe the free evening
When an evening opens up, treat the menu of options as a delicious indulgence rather than a problem to solve by texting ten people.
Pro tip Ask 'what would I do on holiday?' to surface genuinely wanted activities.
In the wild
Starting in January 2019, Specter began with journaling most days as her one reliable way to be healthily alone. After a couple of months she added a challenge: brunch alone, on her own terms, at the time and place she wanted. She layered in daily meditation, then a solo restaurant dinner, and eventually a week's holiday entirely by herself. Each micro-challenge built on the last, and by year's end she looked back at a path from journaling to solo travel and felt genuine pride at how far she'd come.
→ A previously distraction-dependent extrovert became able to spend a boring Monday evening comfortably alone.
Ali describes having an alonement block scheduled for 9pm when a podcast guest cancels, letting him stretch it back to 7pm. Because the time is named and planned, the cancellation reads as a bonus rather than an abandonment. He weighs a menu of options he's genuinely excited about: a film he hasn't seen, a video game he hasn't started, a solo journaling dinner, and spends the day looking forward to the evening.
→ A gap that once triggered a panicked search for company becomes anticipated quality time.
Common mistakes
Leaving alone time as leftover silt
If solitude only fills the gaps around work and relationships, it either never happens or happens at low quality; schedule it like the big rocks.
Skipping the emotional-regulation base
Attempting solitude with no way to calm and ground yourself makes it unbearable, so you avoid it, reinforcing the fear.
Planning from panic, not intention
Deciding what to do only once you're already alone and dreading it produces a frenetic, scrolling evening instead of a restorative one.
Is it for you?
Best for
Sociable, busy people who feel panic or emptiness at the prospect of an evening by themselves.
Not ideal for
Natural introverts who already find solo time restorative and effortless.
From the transcript
“Solitude skills are the opposite to social skills, solitude skills are the skills you need to be able to spend time comfortably alone; they're not…”
“We should all be able to spend a boring Monday evening comfortably alone and have the resources in us.”
“I want to come to those relationships with my best energy, not just because I need them, I want to come to them because I…”
From the episode
Alonement: How To Be Alone And Happy - Francesca Specter
Francesca Specter