How many times have you been in a meeting and you suddenly feel yourself power down? Like a phone when it’s running low on battery life, you process information slower, and if you had no shame, you would just power off in the middle of a conversation. Unlike a phone or a computer, people can’t just shut off in the middle of a work meeting and find the nearest outlet to plug in to. If only there were the human equivalent of a charging cord to bring us back to life and retain a stable enough battery to keep trucking, but it’s a bit more complicated than that. We have to deliberately carve out time to be alone. That’s when the metaphorical percentage on our batteries can start to tick upwards.

In the beginning of our current decade—the quarantine years—I had the very odd experience of going from being isolated in my family home and completing my senior year of high school online to suddenly moving to a new city for college and living in a shoebox dorm room with a roommate. At the time, I was elated to meet a slew of new people, filling my time hanging out in shared lounge spaces in my dorm or on campus with new friends. 

After being alone for so long, rotting away in my own room for a year, it was amazing to have people around at every turn. However, I began to realize I was literally never alone in my own space. Naturally, at the beginning and end of the day, my roommate was also in our room. When I tried to find peace in a study room, someone else was already there. Finding an unoccupied space is truly rarer than a unicorn. That’s the nature of a college campus, but I realized I desperately needed to find time alone with no one else around in order to take a much needed breath.

In our article, How to Do Things By Yourself, I write about the benefits of getting out in the world and participating in activities on your own. This article discusses how alone time is healthy and a tool to regulate emotions. The same is true here, but while the previous article focused on how to become comfortable being alone, this concept is about understanding when you desperately need time alone and how to set those boundaries.

In The Joy of Solitude: How to Reconnect with Yourself in an Overconnected World, author and psychologist Robert J. Coplan highlights why we need to recharge. Coplan quotes Erving Goffman’s idea of being “offstage.” When you are alone, there’s no need to “perform” or worry about what other people think of you. Some people typically associate this performative trait with extroverts, while introverts are the ones who need time to recharge. However, no matter which “-vert” you identify with, some designated me time can benefit anyone in moderation. Finding the correct ratio of social time and alone time is critical, as this ratio varies widely from person to person.(1)

Understanding your own ratio of alone and social time comes down to choice. Forcing yourself to be alone can be just as damaging as a lack of alone time. The same is true about the quality or quantity of the alone time. If you desire to be alone, that time will benefit you. If you don’t want to be alone or choose it out of fear, that time is not beneficial. Understanding your relationship with solitude is the first step to effectively taking time for yourself (Coplan, 2025).(1)

To understand how you like to be alone, start by focusing on the basics. In The Joy of Solitude, Coplan advises readers to document their journey of understanding solitude in a journal. Each day, spend some time alone. After a busy day, spend fifteen minutes doing nothing. Don’t look at your phone; just sit with your thoughts. Then, write down how you felt about the experience in a journal. What did you think about? Did the time fly by? Was it difficult? Ask yourself, “do you feel recharged?” Do you feel recharged enough to be around other people? Could you still benefit from more time alone? If a physical journal isn’t your forte, use any resources available to you. The notes app on your phone or a document on a computer is just fine. 

Think of this process as a science experiment. Attempt different methods and note down your thoughts afterward. If you’re a visual person, try drawing out your feelings as abstract or as literal as you’d like.

Methods to Try:

• Sit for fifteen minutes with just your thoughts.

• Sit for fifteen minutes or more with calming music or a guided meditation app.

• Slow down your morning/nighttime routine (Be deliberate about this time, be present in the moment).

• Go for a walk during a break.

• Scroll on your phone, mindfully (aka, avoid social media or texting).

  • Play a puzzle game on your phone

  • Create a new music playlist

  • Search for images to create a mood board (How to Create a Vision Board).

• Make yourself a meal (Once again, be present in each step).

• Read a book or magazine in a cozy spot for thirty minutes.

After trying different methods, you’re very likely to recognize the patterns in your journal entries. From there you can figure out what works best for you. Someone may decide they need a lot of alone time to make the most of their social time. Whereas, someone else may realize a quick ten minute break in the middle of the day is all they need to return to society with a charged battery. 

Another tidbit to note is that some people can get the same experiences of alone time even when among other people. In college, two of my roommates and I would do this all the time. After a long day of classes, we were all able to recharge by sitting in the living room together in silence. One of us may be making dinner, the other two on their phones in the living room, showing each other TikToks occasionally. My fourth roommate needed time alone in her room before she could eventually join our silent party. There are lots of ways to recharge, and no two people are exactly the same. Test being alone in a crowd, on a bus, in a library, or a busy break room, and take your notes after. Do you feel recharged just the same as when you’re fully alone? Are there slight differences? Big differences? Conduct your experiments, take notes, and draw up a plan with how to proceed with scheduling alone time in your life.

Once you know what works best for you, block out times in your calendar to take the alone time that you need. Be proactive in planning when to take a break. With busy lives and different schedules, blocking out alone time and sticking to it serves you when maintaining a relationship with your social battery and relationships in general.

I’ve been guilty many times of viewing empty slots in my calendar as spaces to fill up with social time when I should have seen it as dedicated alone time. When I was in my first year of college trying to figure out my own relationship to solitude, I was quick to jump on opportunities to hang out with friends if they asked. Even if I knew deep down that I needed that time to do something by myself, I would feel guilty because I technically didn’t have anything going on, or I would worry I’d miss out on a life-changing adventure. I would take my free time and fill it with more social time, even when I desperately needed time alone.

Don’t feel guilty when you need to take time for yourself to recharge. Many times, taking that time can actually strengthen relationships. Some much needed solitude means coming back as your most balanced and refreshed self. I’m sure many people can relate to coming home from a bad day and accidentally taking your grumpy mood out on the people you live with. If you know that is a trait of yours, plan to go on a walk or spend time in your room before talking to anyone when you get home. The key here is to communicate that to the people in your life. Set boundaries when it comes to the free time in your calendar. Be honest about what you need. Say, “I would love to talk to you, but I need fifteen minutes to myself first.” Most people would much rather talk to a refreshed person fifteen minutes later than a grumpy person right away.

You can also learn how to outright say no to some things when you know you need some solitude. Rebecca A. Clay writes about the harmful trait graduate students have of feeling the need to say yes to everything, which can also be said of students at all levels and can transition into workplaces.(2) Psychologist Mary McKinney says, “You're not going to be able to do your best work if you're so scattered because you've agreed to everything.(2) This is where understanding how much alone time you need to be a functioning person is important, so you can be that person for all of your responsibilities. One interviewed graduate student says she schedules out “every minute of every day,” including time to sleep, exercise, and spend time with her partner.(2) I would add blocking off time to eat meals and the aforementioned alone time to this calendar as well. From there you can see what your full day looks like. If an opportunity arises that you really want to attend, you can then determine what in your schedule can be moved around to ensure you have enough battery for your entire day.

Many people aren’t as busy as graduate students, and you may not feel the need to create a minute by minute calendar, but you can still consider the idea of saying no to some things. For example, imagine you’re looking at your calendar and notice your Saturday is free the upcoming weekend. You’re looking forward to having some time to yourself. If a friend reaches out to ask if you’re free, don’t feel pressured to say you are if you really want that full day to yourself. Technically you are busy even if you’ll be busy doing nothing. You have the option to simply say, “Sorry, I’m busy. What about another time?” Don’t feel the need to overexplain, although if it’s the correct moment, this could be an opportunity to tell them about your solitude journey. Though, try not to make it a habit of telling your friends you’re busy every time they reach out. “What about another time?” is important to maintaining relationships. Remember your relationship to solitude is about the correct balance of alone time and social time.

Next time you plug your phone in to charge after it suddenly dies on you in the middle of the day, think about what you would do to recharge yourself. Alone time doesn’t have to be something to feel guilty about. Think about spending time with yourself the same way you would think about spending time with your friends or family or romantic partners. It takes a lot of time and commitment to develop long-lasting, healthy relationships. Take the time to grow a good relationship with yourself, too.

Works Cited

1. Clay, R. A. (2013, November). Just say no. gradPSYCH, 11(4) 34.

2. Coplan, R. J. (2025). The Joy of Solitude: How to Reconnect with Yourself in an Overconnected World. Simon & Schuster.

3. Taylor, I. (2025). This overlooked habit might be your best stress relief tool. BBC Science Focus. Retrieved from https://www.sciencefocus.com/wellbeing/spending-time-alone-psychology

Credits

Editor: Piper Ruth

Research Consultant: Emmerson Borthwick

Illustrator: Adri Chavez

**The Beamish Club does not offer professional medical advice, treatments, nor diagnosis. Anything written and published by The Beamish Club is not a direct replacement for medical treatment. If you have health concerns, please seek advice from your local health and mental health professionals for treatment plans.**