niksen - The Art of Doing Nothing

niksen celebrates indolence, which may include just staring out the window, hanging out, listening to music, or looking at the sky
Photo by Thomas Kinto on Unsplash

Overview niksen

In our day to day activities, we act, try to act lot of things in order to live. Today world demands increasingly high speed and efficiency in every spheres of life. Many of us spend holidays with computers for various pending jobs, taking calls for follow ups, running place to place, which seem endless. However from ancient times to present world, people have tried different avenues to find time for happiness, few of them succeeded, many of us failed. First it was Wei Wu Wei - the idea of action through inaction, then the Danish concept hygge that made staying in and getting cozy cool that made staying in and getting cozy cool and Sweden's lagom which encourages living a balanced life. There are plenty of buzzy Nordic lifestyle methods that proponents claim will make us a better person, such as Slow Movement which is about slowing down the pace of life. This movement was started in 1986 by Carlo Petrini.  Now there is another European trend that's being embraced as away to combat our increasingly demanding and stressful lives : niksen. The Dutch concept is as simple as doing nothing.

In his novel La Lenteur (English - Slowness ) the french writer Milan Kundera warned us

When things happen too fast, nobody can be certain about anything at all, not even about himself.

There are several researches on this issue which indicate that an overly busy life is not healthy because it is frequently the cause of burnout, stress related issues, anxiety disorders, depression, sleeping disorders and heart-related problems.    

The Idea of Doing Nothing

The Italian's also have a concept for piddling around known as 'La Doice Far Niente' which means - the sweetness of doing nothing.

Julia Roberts in Eat Pray Love

This concept is featured in Elizabeth Gilbert's masterpiece - Eat, Pray, Love, the other day. It is based on Gilbert's memoir, - a biographical romantic drama. One of the male character explains la doice far niente, he further adds Italians may wonder home after a few hours of working to take a little nap, they may be inspired by a nearby cafe and sit down to have a glass of wine, or they just go home and make love to their wife. Although it may be bit of unrealistic for most of us to just cut out of our jobs in the middle of the day to go take a nap. the scene is still compelling. The idea that 'doing nothing' is actually an event in and of itself. The idea that we no longer run on a treadmill of activity from getting the kids ready for school, to brushing our teeth, to conference calls, to picking up kids, fixing dinner and bed - only to start over again. The idea that our actions day to day become influenced by our instincts and no longer by routines, shoulds, and musts.
    

niksen - what is it ?

The Dutch concept of niksen or the art of doing nothing has become the buzzword in the American lexicon. Niksen has become enormously popular as an effective way to handle stress, burnout, anxiety and other stress-related ailments. Caroline Jansen, the best selling author of the book Niksen : The Dutch Art of Doing Nothing explains, niksen can be practiced by  anyone by slowing down and celebrating the

moment of not achieving

Essentially, the concept of niksen celebrates indolence, which may include just staring out the window, hanging out, listening to music, or looking at the sky. Niksen not only emphasizes us that it's all right to have periods of doing nothing but it also reminds us that purposely avoiding productivity is beneficial for our mental, emotional and physical well-being.

The Protestant work ethic has had a profound impact on the Dutch lifestyle so much so that the Dutch often feel pressured to fill their leisure time with productive and purposeful activities. The cultural bias against doing nothing is also emphasized in the Dutch language. For example, the popular proverb niksen is niks means

doing nothing is good for nothing

The Dutch worldview of being productive and avoiding indolence had a serious impact on many Dutch individuals. Several research findings show that many Dutch suffer from burnout, stress-related problems and the cases of anxiety are steadily on the rise.

Niksen is about letting our mind go where it will without any kind of expectations
Photo by Andrew Neel on Unsplash

Contrary to the cultural orientation of hard work, productivity and aversion to indolence, the new mantra of niksen or doing nothing has become extremely popular in Netherlands. Niksen has been proven to be an antidote for stress and burnout. According to Carolien Hamming, a coach at CSR Centrum, an organization that teaches its member effective ways to deal with stress and burnout,

instead of constantly occupying your mind with what you need to do next or bouncing from one task to another, niksen is the practice of slowing it all down. It's welcome reprieve from societal expectations about work and productivity that permeates the culture.

Niksen is about letting our mind go where it will without any kind of expectations. Hamming points out

It's a form of mental resting (and) recuperation while you are awake.

However, before this Dutch concept of niksen there are historical evidence of practicing the idea pf doing nothing. The philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome regularly made the practice of doing nothing, the center of their lives. Philosophers from Schopenhauer to Bertrand Russel have also contemplated what it means to truly do nothing. The seventeenth century French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal famously noted,

All the unhappiness of men arise from one simple fact that the cannot sit quietly in their chamber. 

Shinto Buddhists living in ancient city of Kyoto also believed in the philosophy of doing nothing. Their motto was

Don't just do something. Sit there.

A lot of us have the mindset that it's sin  to engage in idling, even our holiday time is all about "recharging" to help us survive in the world of work. The Dutch concept of doing nothing on the other hand exhorts us to drop out of the working world just for a little while.

Importance of niksen in our lives

Research findings consistently indicate that by being busy at all time, we are slowly but surely losing our ability to be still and do nothing because our brains are now wired to oppose any kind of effort to be inactive. According to Dr Sandi Mann, mental health practitioner and psychologist at the University of Central Lancashire and author of several books on mental health, even something like daydreaming makes us more creative and more efficient at problem-solving and better at coming up with innovative ideas. For Mann, for all this to happen, though, we need to be totally idle - doing nothing. Mann says,

Let the mind search for its own stimulation that's when you get the daydreaming and mind wandering, and that's when you're more likely to get the creativity.

For Mann niksen helps us to become still and when we become still it lets us see things with more clarity and depth.

While doing nothing may sound like a very simple idea. but when we are always busy and don't seem to have the time just to sit back and relax, it may not be easy just do nothing. Hamming says this is precisely why we need to practice niksen.

especially when it feels uncomfortable, (we) need much more niksen.

In her latest article The Case for Doing Nothing in The New York Times, Olga Mecking, a writer and a journalist, who lives in Netherlands, offers the following guidelines to practice niksen

• Making Time - We must make time for nicksen and do it purposefully. We need to be mindful of when we are most productive and when our mind starts to shut off, losing our focus, and we start performing our tasks in a dull, monotonous way. This is when we must take a break and engage in doing nothing. It is good idea to focus on prioritizing the things that we find to be important and bring us joy. By focusing on the important parts of our life, we will find the motivation to build free time into our schedule.

        

By focusing on the important parts of our life, we will find the motivation to build free time into our schedule.
Photo by Blake Barlow on Unsplash

• Focus on Temperament  - We must  try hard to resist the temptation to be busy all the time. We should not feel guilty when we take breaks from work or go on holidays. If we feel guilty about being perceived as lazy then we need to think of niksen not as a sign of laziness but an important life skill.

• Realistic Expectation  - We must be realistic about our expectations. Learning the skill of niksen requires patience, time and effort. So. if we find ourselves not being able to fully enhance the practice of niksen, we should not feel discouraged. Sitting still and doing nothing may be uncomfortable in the initial stages but with patience and practice we can learn.

• Reorganize Surroundings  - We must reorganize our environment. Our surroundings have a major effect on how much niksen  we can embrace. We should have a space either at work or at home that is conductive of practising not doing anything. If, for example, our bedroom is filled with stuff from our office, like a computer, laptop, stationery, files and so on, we will be reminded of work, which may act as an impediment to idling.

      
Experimenting with different lifestyles to find the right one for us is also a key process towards the path of niksen. We live an age of constant distractions and nothing is more important than practising sitting still and doing nothing. Pico Iyer the author of niksen says,

You can go on vacation to Paris or Hawaii or New Orleans three months from now, and you will have a tremendous time. I'm sure. But if you want to come back feeling new - alive and full of fresh hope and in love with the world - I think the place to visit may be Nowhere.

Conclusion

The understanding of 'nothing' varies widely between cultures, especially between Western and Eastern cultures and philosophical traditions. For instance, Śūnyatā (emptiness), unlike "nothingness", is considered to be a state of mind in some forms of Buddhism (see Nirvana, mu, and Bodhi). Achieving nothing as a state of mind in this tradition allows one to be totally focused on a thought or activity at a level of intensity that they would not be able to achieve if they were consciously thinking. A classic example of this is an archer attempting to erase the mind and clear the thoughts to better focus on the shot. Some authors have pointed to similarities between the Buddhist conception of nothingness and the ideas of Martin Heidegger and existentialists like Sartre, although this connection has not been explicitly made by the philosophers themselves.

Experimenting with different lifestyles to find the right one for us is also a key process towards the path of niksen
 Photo by Antonio Gabola on Unsplash

In some Eastern philosophies, the concept of "nothingness" is characterized by an egoless state of being in which one fully realizes one's own small part in the cosmos.

(Source : Wikipedia)

 
If we follow Iyer's advice and sit still and do nothing, we may be able to get closer to our senses, attaining a higher degree of clarity, harmony and joy that endures. I don't believe niksen or doing nothing is a luxury that is reserved for only the privileged. On the contrary it's a practice that is necessary for anyone who wishes to have a healthier, happier life. It's for all those folks who want to experience what the legendary Canadian singer, song writer and poet Leonard Cohen stated so movingly  that sitting still and doing nothing actually gets us

wide-awake, exhilarated, and pumping-hearted  as when you are in love