Solo Table Theory: A Case for Scheduling Time to Be Alone More Often

Pause the advice to network for a minute. What if the best company you can give yourself is your own? From solo lunches to creative rituals, solitude might be the space where ideas bloom.

What if sitting alone at lunch or even having dinner out when you’re travelling for work or pleasure isn’t something to feel self-conscious about, but an opportunity to reconnect with yourself? From the viral Solo Table Theory to classic concepts, solitude has long been linked to creativity, confidence and independent thought, and more people are proactively practising it.

1. What is Solo Table Theory?

From TikTok to Instagram, creators have been “testing the Solo Table Theory”. It’s the idea that if you can sit alone in a cafe or restaurant, you have found a home within yourself. By being so comfortable with yourself, you’re perceived as confident, independent, interesting or socially powerful. 

For those testing the theory, it’s designed to help you embrace solitude, without feeling the need to “look busy”. We all know the feeling. We grab our phone to text a friend or make a call. We scroll social media. We check our emails. However, Solo Table Theory encourages you to be present with yourself and not worry about what other people think.

2. The Spotlight Effect & Solo Table Theory

Much of the Solo Table Theory trend assumes that, good or bad, people are perceiving you - making judgements about you being alone. When in reality, they likely aren’t wondering why you’re alone. They aren’t assuming you have no friends. They aren’t completely confused. Nor are they likely positively labelling you as empowered or confident either. In reality, they likely aren’t thinking about you at all.

In my earlier blog,  A Confidence Cheat Code for Building Your Personal Brand (8 Tips), I touched on The Spotlight Effect in psychology. It helps us understand why testing the Solo Table Theory can feel so uncomfortable or courageous for many. The Spotlight Effect is the idea that we have the tendency to overestimate how much other people notice, pay attention to and remember our appearance and behaviour. 

The classic research comes from psychologists Thomas Gilovich and Kenneth Savitsky, who studied how much people judge the amount of attention others are paying to them.

One of their most famous experiments involved something awkward - wearing embarrassing T-shirts. Participants were asked to enter a room wearing a T-shirt featuring a large picture of an embarrassing or unusual person. Afterwards, they were asked to estimate how many people in the room had noticed the shirt. They dramatically overestimated it. 

One explanation is what researchers call egocentric anchoring.

You have an enormous amount of information about yourself: 

• What you’re wearing

• Whether you’re meeting anyone

• Whether you’re nervous

• What your hair is doing today compared to others

• What you're thinking

But you don’t have access to everyone else’s internal experience. So your own experience becomes the reference point. Your brain reasons, “I’m extremely aware that I’m sitting here alone; therefore other people must be noticing that I’m sitting here alone.” When in reality, everyone is running their own version of the same process.

We spend so much time managing how we're perceived by other people that we rarely create enough space to hear our own thoughts. Intentional solitude gives creativity, reflection and ideas room to emerge.

So the real power of Solo Table Theory for your personal brand may be less about the science of social signalling and impression formation, and more about what it can do for you - your creativity, your insights and inspiration.

3. Artist Dates: The Original Solo Table Theory

While Solo Table Theory might be the trending idea for those building their personal brands on social media, the concept of ‘solo dates’ in general has been popular for decades among creatives and high performers. In Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, a book with a cult following, she popularised the idea of Artist Dates.

Artist Dates are, say, two hours weekly committed to nurturing your creative consciousness - your inner artist: 

‘The artist date is an excursion, a play date that you preplan and defend against all interlopers. You do not take anyone on this artist date but you and your inner artist, a.k.a. your creative child.”

While not everyone can afford the luxury of dining out alone weekly, Artist Dates can be inexpensive or even free. Like a long walk, a trip to the beach, visiting a thrift store,  watching an old movie, or visiting your local art gallery.

Artist Dates are the second tool Cameron champions. The first is Morning Pages, which, as discussed in my earlier blog, Create your ultimate day (in advance): Morning Pages & mini visualisations, is my new favourite part of my daily routine. Cameron highlights that the two work in partnership: 

“Think of this combination of tools in terms of a radio receiver and transmitter. It is a two-step, two-directional process: out and then in. Doing your morning pages, you are sending—notifying yourself and the universe of your dreams, dissatisfactions, and hopes. Doing your artist date, you are receiving—opening yourself to insight, inspiration, guidance.”

Inspired by the book, this year, I committed to schedule Artist Dates. Giving myself grace for it to be whatever my inner self felt called to, so long as it represented a slight shift in my usual routine. As a foodie, solo lunch dates naturally call to me. While I love sharing meals with friends and family, I find myself experiencing the flavours better than I ever have. The food styling, something I’ve always adored, seems more striking. But more than anything, I have time with my own thoughts - away from my meetings, screens and pressure for always-on productivity. It’s created the space for ideas to bloom.

So when you put down your phone and stop “looking busy”, don’t just do it for how other people see you. Do it for you.

Even “boring” dates can be opportunities for creativity to flourish, as I shared in my earlier blog, The Boredom Advantage: The Science Behind Why Productivity is Boosted by Pauses. In a popular study on boredom, creativity and cognitive processes, Sandi Mann at the University of Central Lancashire, engaged participants to complete a deliberately boring task. They copied phone numbers from a directory. Following this, those who were primed with the mundane task performed better on creative tasks than participants who weren’t preconditioned for boredom. 

Boredom works more brilliantly than we might realise, because it increases: 

• Mind wandering

• Default mode network activation 

• Associative thinking

This means when the brain is unstimulated externally, it begins stimulating internally. Boredom creates cognitive white space - the blank canvas for new ideas to come to life. 

4. A Room of One’s Own: A Classic Solo Table Concept

Some of history’s greatest minds and top performers have proactively embraced solitude. Albert Einstein took long walks daily as a part of his intellectual routine. Steve Jobs also saw talking as a thinking tool. J.K Rowling deliberately wrote in cafes because she loved the feeling of being alone in a crowd. Kobe Bryant would famously have gym sessions in the middle of the night because of the mental advantage he felt it gave him. He wasn’t alone because no one wanted to train with him. He was alone because he was willing to do the thing other people weren’t willing to do. 

In 1929, Virginia Woolf published an extended essay, “A Room of One’s Own”. Part of her central argument wasn’t that women need a bedroom or office, but rather it was a metaphor for:

• Privacy

• Uninterrupted thinking

• Intellectual independence

• Freedom from other people’s expectations

• Control over your own time

• The ability to develop ideas without constantly performing a social role

Woolf understood that being around other people changes how you behave and think because you’re constantly accommodating what everyone else wants. It becomes difficult to hear your own thoughts. Solitude creates a temporary escape from that social feedback loop. Using Woolf’s philosophy, the Solo Table Theory is less about paying attention to how you’re being perceived and more about what you’re perceiving. 

You Are the Artist

Maybe the point of sitting alone was never about how other people perceive you. It’s about what happens when you stop performing for them — and finally give yourself the space to notice what you think, feel and create.