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How to bail on plans without losing friends

5 questions to ask yourself before flaking.

It’s the act that’s defined a generation, an experience so common it’s become memeified: canceling plans. Bailing is a litmus test of sorts; who and what events you back out of says a lot about you as a person. Are you the type who commits and only bails when absolutely necessary? Or are you a frequent flake looking to change their ways? (No judgment here: The occasional canceling of plans is acceptable, and you shouldn’t feel guilty about it.)

Call it a byproduct of overscheduling, a facet of introversion, or a condition of mild social anxiety, but bailing is a popular tool in our social arsenal. Regularly deployed mere hours ahead of a previously scheduled engagement we’ve come to dread, canceling was once considered a get-out-of-obligation-free card. In recent years, though, general consensus around bowing out has seemed to shift, perhaps spurred by the growing attention paid to the dangers of social isolation or simply because being consistently bailed on feels like garbage. All of which is to say, canceling requires much more tact than simply rattling off a text 30 minutes before you’re supposed to meet up with a friend.

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There are, of course, valid reasons to skip a movie night (you’re sick, for instance) and very few excuses good enough to justify not showing up to a wedding you RSVP’d to. But rather than giving in to the impulse to flake when the urge hits, it’s important to make a more considered choice based not on how much you think you’ll enjoy a social event but on the consequences of skipping.

Consider this your canceling checklist, a bailing thought experiment, a toolkit for bowing out. Taken together, the following five questions will help inform your decision on whether to skip a social engagement.

Who are you bailing on?

Before flaking, take your audience into consideration — namely, whether this is a person you’d be comfortable inconveniencing. Because we’ve already invested significant time and energy into close relationships with family and friends, we’re more likely to want to preserve those relationships by upholding plans. This past history can influence how comfortable we are with bailing.

“How important is this person?” Julian Givi, an associate professor of marketing at West Virginia University, tells Vox. “Do I value this person’s friendship, or........

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