Niksen: Embracing the Dutch Art of Doing Nothing

by Olga Mecking

“The attraction of illness lies in its capacity to redeem one of the greatest vices of our society: not doing anything,” write management professors Carl Cederström and André Spicer in The Wellness Syndrome.

What does it mean to do nothing anyway? Many people have asked me, what does niksen mean? Do I do nothing when I browse Facebook? When I sit on my couch and worry about my children? When I’m thinking about an article I want to write? When I meditate? The answer is no. You might call those things nothing, but in reality, they are not. These things are not niksen. To do niks does not mean to work, to perform emotional labor, or to be mindful.

The criticism did make me wonder, however: Is niksen really a Dutch thing? My first language is not Dutch, and I was not born in the Netherlands. Was it possible I misunderstood the origins of niksen? An American friend who lives here and is married to a Dutch man told me she doesn’t know anyone who does it. Yet while there may be skepticism, all Dutch people I have spoken to about niksen immediately understood the term. At the very least, it is clear to the Dutch what the concept means, even if some claim they don’t niks themselves.

And in this, Zen is very different from niksen or, as the aforementioned article puts it, “Zen is something a person does.”

Hygge, Koselig, Gemütlichkeit In 2016, the world became fascinated with hygge (pronounced hoo-gah or hyoo-guh), an untranslatable Danish word that refers to spending time with friends in a pleasant, relaxed atmosphere and enjoying the simple things that life brings. In fact, this word proved to be so popular that it became a finalist for Oxford Dictionaries’ Word of the Year in 2016.

We expect ourselves, as the Germans say, to be an eierlegende Wollmilchsau: a pig that gives milk, eggs, and wool, on top of meat. We strive to be everything, for everyone, at all times. Being a modern-day human is exhausting.

“If you’re a creative, you’re never not working, because there are always problems you are trying to solve. We filter though the problems that we’re processing and are at an impasse with,” says productivity expert and acclaimed author Chris Bailey. Ideas, he believes, come not just from our external environment like a book that helps us solve the very problem we’ve been mulling over, but also from our own wandering mind. Thinking, therefore, is work; it is not niksen.

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 your head and just get lost for a while.

You do niks because you want to. When you’re bored, you’d rather be doing something else. And that is exactly why I feel bored when I’m cleaning my house but never when I’m niksening.

“People think they’re taking a break a lot of the time, but they’re not. They’re just going from one distraction to the next. We go from a work context to just paying attention to our phones for ten minutes or so, and we stay distracted,” says productivity expert Chris Bailey.

One of the reasons niksen is so hard is because we feel ashamed when we engage in activities that are apparently less productive.

And though I’ve said that niksen is not work, I’ll make an exception here: it is the work of self-care.

New Thought stands in stark contrast to Calvinism, which Barbara Ehrenreich aptly describes as “socially imposed depression” in her book Smile or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled America and the World. Yet some Calvinistic tendencies remain mostly intact in New Thought, such as the constant self-examination and what Barbara Ehrenreich calls “judgmentalism.”

Hunting a mammoth may seem like a great idea. It would mean a lot of food for a whole tribe, but it would require hours of running after a huge animal and involve a high chance of getting killed. It would also require extreme energy from both you and your fellow hunters. Too much effort really, which is why prehistoric hunter-gatherer humans typically settled on a few hare traps and a handful of berries instead. “People are more attracted to doing nothing.

When I ask him what the brain is doing when it’s not doing anything, he pauses and replies, “Everything.”

What Chris Bailey calls mind-wandering and I call niksen is great advice for anyone looking to be more productive. “Because we don’t have to force ourselves to focus on anything, we replenish our supply of energy when our mind wanders. And so we get that time back and then some,” he says.

Sometimes doing nothing will be just what you need to become a more productive human being. Maybe you just need to redefine productivity so that you can feel productive lying on the couch, or taking care of your family, or going to a museum, or doing something else that doesn’t have an immediate purpose or a measurable outcome.

This is exactly how it feels to be on a deadline or to work toward something with purpose. It’s effective and helps us get the work done but it’s not very creative. The open mode, by contrast, is a “relaxed . . . expansive . . . less purposeful mode . . . in which we’re probably more contemplative, more inclined to humor (which always accompanies a wider perspective) and, consequently, more playful. It’s a mood in which curiosity for its own sake can operate because we’re not under pressure to get a specific thing done quickly. 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. The lack of distractions and sensory cues leaves people’s minds looking for their own entertainment and coming up with more creative, inventive ideas. Though the seeds of these ideas were already there, the quiet and the niksen are what actually make creativity shine.

Resist the Culture of Busyness If you’re doing nothing, own it. When someone asks you what you’re doing during your niksen time, simply respond, “Nothing.” Be unapologetic about taking breaks or holidays, and if you start to feel worried about being seen as lazy, think of niksen not as a sign of laziness but as an important life skill that might help you regain some composure, find calm, and prevent burnout.

If you are someone who constantly feels the urge to grab your phone every time you sit down to do niks, consider the following suggestion. Get yourself a small notebook in which to jot down the thoughts that come up. That way you don’t have to rely on your phone, and won’t get sucked into browsing Facebook, starting a tweetstorm, or playing Candy Crush. “If you have a really compelling thought that won’t let you just sit, write it down and set it aside,” suggests Doreen Dodgen-Magee.

Think about what things you want (and can afford) to outsource, how often, and to whom. Then use the time this gives you to work, get some exercise, or, yes, niksen. A while ago, I wrote an article for O, the Oprah Magazine in which I shared some advice on how to fight that nagging voice in your head pressuring you to always be doing more. In the article, I suggest asking yourself three questions: Will not doing this task affect your safety, health, or well-being? Is this necessary? Is this my job?

De-schedule Your Kids It’s not just adults who benefit from niksen. Kids do too. Not only does resting or getting bored have benefits for children, it actually affects them more than it does adults because it teaches them from a young age to be more self-reliant and independent. Also, their brains are more adaptive than ours are and the benefits consolidate more quickly. Niksening will teach your children to sit with uncomfortable feelings instead of immediately acting on them. “Making more niksen time means setting boundaries around how you spend time, not negating responsibilities that need tending to. How each family sets their boundaries is up to them,” says Juli Fraga. Some of her ideas include reducing the number of weekend commitments and scheduling time away for doing nothing. “Call me lazy, but I have a lot of niksen time on the weekends. I make zero plans, relax on my couch with my favorite blanket and my cat, and enjoy observing the thoughts that travel through my mind,” Juli Fraga says. Some may call this spacing out, but Fraga prefers to call it tuning in. To her, the benefits are visible right away. “Doing nothing isn’t ‘nothing,’ and it can end up being an enormous something when we see how pulling back on busyness can bolster our physical and emotional health,” she adds. Giving children the experience of doing niks, and letting them create and imagine what to do with that time, isn’t optional, “it’s a required experience for a child,” believes Tony Crabbe, ...