The Power of Doing Nothing

By: Olga Mecking

People all over the world are looking for ways to get better quickly and with minimum of effort. And who blames them? At a time when people are so busy and where everyone is constantly overstimulated by (often contradictory) advice from various gurus, it feels like we constantly have to work on ourselves. And that is exhausting.

But what if there was a way to feel better that didn’t require much effort, time, energy or buying stuff? What if the solution was as simple as… doing nothing, or niksen, as the Dutch call it?

Make no mistake, doing nothing might be simply but it is not easy. When we’re used to constantly moving around, being busy and getting things done, sitting on the couch might not seem like a reasonable thing to do.

But niksen can be much more powerful than we’d think but its positive sides have not been talked about much. When I was doing research for my book, I found it hard to actually describe what doing nothing meant! And my experts were not speaking with one voice either. Some said it was boredom or laziness, but I disagree: I’m bored when I clean but never when I niks. Neither do I think niksen is lazy: after all, to serve others, we need a break ourselves!

My favorite definition was by Carolien Hamming. She told me, “niksen was doing nothing without a purpose.” We don’t do niks so that we can become better human beings. We do it just because.

I’d like to encourage everyone to find their own ways to niks, with one caveat. So often we scroll down on our phones or reply to emails and when asked “what you’re doing,” we say “nothing.” It’s not that scrolling down is bad per se but it’s not “nothing.” It’s scrolling. The same goes for Netflix, Facebook, Twitter, or, if you’re like me, cooking videos from Buzzfeed’s tasty. Just because something isn’t terrible important doesn’t mean it’s nothing. At the same time, there are tasks that look like doing nothing but aren’t such as the more invisible parts of creative work, emotional labor (the hard but unacknowledged work of making sure everyone around you is happy). Parents and spouses do this type of work but so do coaches, therapists or counsellors. This type of work is just the opposite of scrolling: important but hidden.

At the same time, you could approach some tasks with the niksen mindset. For example, pick up knitting needles, make a doodle, play with kinetic sand, or listen to music. These things will trick your mind into believing you’re doing something while you get all the benefits of niksen.

So, should counsellors, coaches and therapist encourage their clients do try niksen? I do believe so.

First of all, doing nothing can – paradoxically – make us more productive. After all, it makes sense: we can’t do our best work when we’ve been sitting at the computer for the last 3 hours. But with breaks, our brains can get a rest, resulting in more accurate and efficient work.

However, there is a caveat. So many people feel guilty when they’re not working or doing something “productive.” Therapists, coaches and counsellors should make sure their clients know that it’s perfectly fine to not be productive all the time and that taking care of a family, reading a book, relaxing on the beach or yes, doing nothing are perfectly productive ways to spend their time.

Niksen can also make us more creative. My favorite part of my work as a writer is sitting on my coach and waiting for the ideas in my head to bump together, creating new or better ideas. By the time a painter picks up her brush or a writer gets up and starts working on her novel a lot of invisible work has happened already. And that can happen during niksen as well. In fact, we can’t be creative without doing nothing because that is not how creativity works. It can’t always be put on a schedule or works the way we want it to. But that’s also the beauty of it.

Last but not least, niksen can help us make more accurate decisions. The Dutch researcher Ap Dijksterhuis made a study showing that when participants were distracted by a different task that had nothing to do with the decision at hand (in the study, it was either choosing an apartment or a roommate), they made more accurate choices and were happier with the ones they’ve made. And, he showed the importance of intuition. I was surprised at that because as the daughter of two scientists, I’ve always believed in the power of logics. I still do but I might be persuaded to believe in the power of intuition sometimes.

But despite these benefits, niksen can be very hard. I said niksen is simple, but I never said it was easy. We like feeling productive and when all we’ve done for the last few months is running around like a headless chicken, it’s very, very difficult to stop.

But there is good news, too. Hard does not mean impossible. And, we might actually be hard-wired for niksen. We have a special network in our brains – called the default mode network – that only comes “to life” when we do nothing. Isn’t that amazing?

As a linguist, I love making comparisons between the different languages and cultures. And after talking to people from all over the world as well as to experts in intercultural communication, I found that the guilt we feel when we do nothing is universal.

But the discovery of the default mode network as well as the fact that almost every language has a positive expression or two about doing nothing, taking a break, or relaxing, I can safely say that niksen might be a Dutch word, but doing nothing does not belong to the Netherlands, or to any other culture.

It’s what makes us human.

Niksen, Olga Mecking, Uitgeverij Kosmos, ISBN 9789021575605.