When was the last time you did nothing? As in, to have no goal other than to just enjoy being.
If you’re like most people, you’re likely to have difficulty recalling such a luxurious moment. And even if you could, would you admit it? The more you think about it, the more you realize how incredibly difficult it is not only to find the time for nothing but to own it without embarrassment.
In our work- and improvement-focused culture, doing nothing isn’t the mark of time well-spent. Check the dictionary, and you won’t find a positive-sounding label for a do-nothing. You will, however, uncover an array of words discouraging the very idea with all the disappointment of a priggish grandpa: deadbeat, laggard, lazybones, loafer, slacker and couch potato.
Kevin Dickinson in the Big Think says we may finally have a word that not only embodies the joys of unoccupied moments, but the benefits it can bring too. It’s niksen, and it’s on loan to us from the Netherlands.
In its native Dutch, niksen means literally “to do nothing.” According to Maartje Williems, the author of The Lost Art of Doing Nothing, the verb is derived from the noun niks (nothing), and it wasn’t coined to be a ringing endorsement. This is evidenced by its lexical cousin niksnut -essentially, a layabout who does nothing and doesn’t contribute to society. (The Netherlands has its share of finger-wagging grandpas, too.)
But in recent years, niksen has undergone a rebranding. In 2017, journalist Gebke Verhoeven published an article titled “Niksen Is the New Mindfulness” in the magazine Gezond Nu (Healthy Now). The article applied the Dutch verb to the benefits of relaxation that psychologists and sociologists were seeing in their research.
As Verhoeven wrote: “We cram our free time so that we don’t have a minute left to just do nothing. Is that bad? Yes, that’s bad. You don’t give your brain space and time to process information and feel what you really need. In short, you lose yourself a bit. High time to elevate idleness to art.”
Mindfulness has the explicit goal of being fully present in the moment. Meanwhile, niksen’s purpose-free musings are more akin to mindlessness.
So what does count? Staring out the window and watching birds flit around. Enjoying the aroma of your coffee brewing in the morning. Having a pleasant daydream as you listen to music on the couch. Sitting in a cafe and watching the people pass by. It’s any “unguarded moment,” Williems writes, of “having nothing to do and not finding something new to do.”
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