I could, you know, go to the office, but everone interrupts me there. It's not lonely, but unproductive.
The trick is to be productive, but to feel like a human in the mix. For me, Starbucks does that.
Some kind of optimized noise is a weird concept, but I've found that it really works, from time to time. Especially if I'm doing something that requires a great deal of concentration rather than just "production".
The core of the UX is the Focusmate session, a structured, 50-minute video interaction, where you and another user act as accountability partners for one another.
You'll find lots of solopreneurs as well as a handful of sole founders, but above all, you get human interaction without compromising productivity.
Disclaimer - I'm the founder. I was a sole founder for a lonnnng time and doing these sessions was my saving grace.
Some days, though, you are alone at Starbucks, but it's a different kind of alone than working at home all day every day. You're surrounded by people, and when the alternative is zero social contact during your work day, it can make a difference.
Maybe weird. But I don't like sitting in my quiet apartment alone working. (I'm not particularly lonely - I just like the energy better when I'm "out")
Because people are really forward in rural areas.
Hm, now I see the bugs in this idea; poor internet speed for one, compounded by the fact that said person is likely going to want to move out there permanently...
And it's perfectly cool if we never interact with them. That's fine. Maybe sometimes all we want is to have someone around to be faster than when a lion comes out of the shadows and takes the slowest person down. Even if that, or some metaphorical equivalent of it, is exceedingly unlikely in a coffee shop.
Not sure why that never dawned on me.