What solomaxxing means
Most of the coverage defines solomaxxing as deliberately staying single and putting the time and money dating would take into yourself instead. A second strand uses it for something vaguer: maximising your aloneness. Underneath both, the same activities keep being named — eating out alone, the cinema alone, travelling alone — and those are the part you can actually practise.
Where the word came from
The suffix is older than the trend. It starts in 1940s game theory with minimax, arrives in tabletop role-playing games as min-maxing, and in the early 2010s lands on incel message boards, where looksmaxxing meant maximising your physical attractiveness. That is the unpleasant part of the family tree and it is not worth pretending otherwise.
It did not stay there. Wikipedia's account of the suffix, citing the linguist Adam Aleksic, records that by 2024 it had largely detached from those origins, and that most people using it now do so ironically, with no idea where it started. Dazed called 2024 the year of maxxing; by 2026 the US Department of Defense had posted lethalitymaxxing and a UK cabinet minister had said Britmaxxing.
Solomaxxing itself is recent, and nobody knows who coined it. A Salon survey of maxxing words published on 7 May 2026 does not mention it; three weeks later it is in Fortune, and by the end of summer it is in more or less everything. Every outlet says it came off TikTok; none names who said it first, so neither will we.
The sense most of the coverage uses: not dating
In the majority of articles, solomaxxing is a decision about relationships. Brut puts it plainly: "Solomaxxing means intentionally choosing single life and putting your time, money and energy into yourself rather than actively pursuing a romantic relationship." Vice is blunter still: "doing life solo — or simply choosing to be single." Marketplace ran it as an economics segment, because most of the coverage traces the trend to how expensive dating has become. Brut notes the same idea travels as singlemaxxing, alonemaxxing and bymyselfmaxxing.
Read that way, solomaxxing is a status: you either are or are not doing it, and the doing is mostly a matter of what you have stopped.
The second sense, which has nothing to do with dating
A smaller group of writers uses the word for something else entirely. IBTimes UK defines it as "maximising productivity, discipline or personal development while minimising social contact", and attaches it to a wave of creators filming their own solitude. nss magazine treats it as an umbrella for every kind of modern aloneness, friendlessness included, and its standfirst is the sharpest line written about the trend: "Even being alone has become a performative act." The Next Web skips relationships altogether: "Solo-maxxing means maximising your aloneness."
The two get used interchangeably, which is why the word is slippery. One is about who you are not seeing; the other is about how much time you spend by yourself, and how it looks when you post it.
The criticism is worth taking seriously
Almost every article carries a warning, and the warnings are not throwaway. Fortune quotes a counsellor calling it "avoidance dressed up as self-care", and arguing it can dress an economic constraint as a lifestyle choice. The Next Web, on a culture that aestheticises being alone: "pouring accelerant on that, and calling it a candle."
That lands, and dismissing it would be dishonest. Choosing solitude and retreating into it look identical from the outside, and often from the inside. Vice proposes a test — empowerment or fear — which is a fair question and a hard one to answer about yourself on a Tuesday.
What the word describes when you watch what people actually do
Here is what the coverage keeps doing without noticing. It defines solomaxxing by relationship status, and then, asked what it looks like, reaches for the same list every time. Brut: "going on solo trips, eating out alone, taking up a new hobby." Vanity Teen: "going to restaurants, visiting museums, travelling."
The definitions are about a status. The examples are all activities — and the activities are the difficult part, the part with a first time and a version of you that could not do it yet.
Staying single is a circumstance. Being able to walk into a restaurant on a Friday night and eat a whole meal on your own is a skill, and skills are practised.
That is the reading Solo Era is built on, and the one this site means by the word. Not a status you declare. A set of things you get better at, in an order, at a pace you can survive.
What practising it actually looks like
The gap in every article written about this is that none tells you what to do on Saturday. "Eat out alone" is not an instruction: a coffee at a quiet cafe and a tasting menu on a Friday night are not the same act. The activities need grading, so Solo Era's library puts every one on a fixed ladder:
- 1Ten minutes, and nobody is looking.
- 2Visibly alone, briefly.
- 3Visibly alone, for a while.
- 4An unfamiliar setting, plus talking to strangers.
- 5Several days, and your own logistics.
The same activity exists at several rungs, which is what makes it practisable. Bottom, middle, top:
Week to week it is unremarkable, which is the point. One thing, assigned, so you cannot negotiate over which one. The library spans seven kinds of thing — food, culture, movement, travel, everyday errands, solitude, and talking to people — so a month does not become four restaurants. The full spread shows the shape of it.
How you tell practice from hiding
The criticism above deserves an answer rather than a reassurance, and there is one that does not require anybody to examine their own motives. Before you go, you rate how nervous the thing makes you, one to ten. Afterwards, you rate it again. Do that for a few months and you have a line that is yours and nobody else's.
A line that comes down means the practice is working. A line that stays flat tells you something too, and so does a list of missions you keep swapping and never doing. If solomaxxing is going to be avoidance for you, it shows up as a number that does not move — and you see it before anyone else does. That is a better test than asking whether your motives are pure.
Solo Era
One thing to do on your own each week, graded so it is the right size, with a number before and after. An iPhone app.
Questions people ask about solomaxxing
Does solomaxxing mean you have to be single?
In most of the press coverage, yes — that is the definition being used. In the sense this site means, no. Being able to do things on your own is useful whoever you go home to, and nothing on the ladder above asks you to be unattached.
Is solomaxxing just loneliness with a better name?
It can be, and several writers have said so. The distinction that holds is between solitude you chose and solitude that happened to you — and you cannot always tell which one you are in from the inside. That is the argument for measuring it rather than deciding it.
Is there a solomaxxing app?
Solo Era is one, in the practice sense described here: it assigns the activity, grades the difficulty and keeps the before-and-after numbers. If what you want is help deciding to stay single, no app does that, and the articles linked above are better company than software.
Where do I start?
Lower than you think. Not dinner: a coffee you drink sitting in, at a quiet hour, somewhere nobody knows you. For a first week planned out, the seven-day version starts at ten minutes; for the thing most people mean by this, eating at a restaurant alone has the clearest steps.
Curious where you stand? Take the free "Am I in my solo era?" quiz.