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Kindle Notes & Highlights
vijf (or five) sounded like twee (two).
I’m particularly fond of the diminutives such as hondje, huisje, or boompje, which mean little dog, little house, or little tree, respectively. You just add -je, and the word becomes little. ‘We’re the tallest people in the world, but our country is small.
In Dutch niks means nothing, and it’s just a small step from niks (which is a noun) to niksen (which is a verb). So niksen literally means ‘nothing-ing’.
niksen comes from niks doen (to do nothing), which is then abbreviated to niksen.
Encyclo.nl, a Dutch online dictionary,
‘lekker niksen’ (‘deliciously doing nothing’)
emotional labour. If I’m sitting on the couch and worrying whether I remembered to schedule my children’s dentist appointment, I’m neither niksening nor ruminating. I’m performing emotional labour, the invisible mental load and emotional management required to keep those around us comfortable and happy. Emotional labour might at times look like niksen because it’s invisible and can be done while sitting on the couch.
Niksen might even be described as anti-mindfulness, as it doesn’t require
you to be aware of your body, your breath, the present moment, or your thoughts. Instead you can use it for the opposite: you can use it to escape into your head and just get lost for a while in there.
‘When you’re truly relaxed, you’re usually not focused on something and your mind has the chance to wander a little bit while you do something fun that you don’t have to force yourself to focus on,’ he tells me. His answer sounds like niksen to me.
While healthy relationships make us happy, so does self-knowledge. ‘We have to know what our own interests are, our own values, our own temperament. It is only when we know ourselves that we can shape our lives in a way that will further our own happiness,’ Rubin says.
In a study performed by Columbia University psychologist Shigehiro Oishi, introverts prefer mountains while their more outgoing counterparts tended towards wide-open plains.
CULTURAL TRAITS THAT MAKE THE DUTCH HAPPY Speaking of food, I love how the Dutch
describe everything, not just their food, as lekker, or delicious. Sleep can be lekker. Being warm can be lekker. Dancing? Definitely lekker. Calm and relaxation? Yum. Just yum. And, to a Dutch person, even busyness is delicious as they sometimes say, lekker druk! Which brings me to niksen. You can say lekker niksen because doing nothing is delicious too.
‘We don’t have to be happy all the time. That’s not nice for the others. For us it is important to be a little humble,’ says Haverkamp.
not boasting too much about achievements is encouraged. The belief is that actions speak for themselves.
defined gezelligheid as ‘everything that warms the heart and makes you smile’. I think this is my favourite definition of this word. And I think niksen can be seen as gezellig at times as well!
The Dutch are critical thinkers and they are unlikely to unquestioningly accept a new trend.
Make a little joke. Make things less important.’
How did we lose the ability to sit still? And what price are we paying for this loss?
‘Whereas today, if you are busy all the time it means you are sought after,’ explains Silvia Bellezza, a researcher who studies alternative status symbols at Columbia Business School. Busyness as a status symbol is especially visible in the US, where Protestant work ethics are strong and where the belief that hard work will get you to the top prevails.
In the Netherlands there is even an expression to describe this: druk druk, lekker belangrijk, or ‘busy busy, so important!
It is sometimes shortened to ‘ddlb’ and some people, mostly upper-class types, use it in response to the question, ‘How are you?’ Though it i...
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It seems all the technological advances that are supposed to make things easier for us actually end up putting more pressure on us.
she feels guilty when she reads a book on the couch while her husband does the dishes.
‘What is your ideal?’ she asks me. In other words, you make your own norms.
I love having so much information at my fingertips. In fact, that trip out to the exhibition that I never arrived at reminded me how in the past I often had to just deal with not knowing something.
We feel stressed out when we’re faced with a situation that would require us to change or adjust our behaviour or circumstances. Stress is actually an important reaction to any situation that needs our attention. But too much
stress, and we’re in trouble.
‘Stress can activate our “inner critic”, that internal voice that tells us we aren’t good enough, smart enough, or capable of handling the demands of life,’ says
For a few glorious moments there is nothing demanding my attention. I feel the stress seeping out of me. I’m relaxed but alert, ready to take on the day. And after a while, I notice something happening. Ideas begin to form and float around in my head. They bump into each other and become new ideas, each one more original than the one preceding it.
Raichle believes the default mode is an important mode for the brain to be in: ‘It’s amazing, all the things that are going on in your brain, talking quietly to itself, when there is no task at hand.’
To Pozen, the hours we spend on something warrants very little to be proud of. At work and in life, we live by the mantra that the more hours we
spend on something, the better it must be. The more time we spend at the office, the harder we work. We measure value in time. And we shouldn’t.
Procrastination can look a lot like niksen. But ‘there’s a fine line between “doing nothing” to promote wellness and decrease stress, and procrastination,’ says Juli Fraga. The difference is in our reasons for doing nothing. ‘When we’re enjoying down time, we aren’t avoiding something,’ she says. But when we procrastinate, we are avoiding a particular activity
1. The anxious procrastinator
2. The disgusted procrastinator
3. The manipulative procrastinator
Boredom literally makes us more creative, better at problem-solving, better at coming up with creative ideas,’ she explains.
Chris Bailey is an avid knitter and he tells me that this helps him relax and let his mind wander.
‘Because of
this wandering, our minds go off into places where we can connect ideas that we had in the past to problems that we’re facing in the present, to become how we’re going to act on that problem in the future,’ he explai...
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We can play, and that is what allows our natural creativity to surface.’
His description of the open mode sounds to me exactly like niksen.
of these ideas were already there, the quiet and niksen are what actually make creativity shine.
Paradoxically,
Contradictory
And so it is for niksen too – it’s good to schedule a little time for it. And a little is better than none at all.
More time
how can I enjoy my time on the couch, instead of thinking about everything that I need to do?
brain dump.
