Sometimes just sitting back and being in the moment is exactly what we need to do
The Danes gave us hygge, the concept of creating a cozy home and lifestyle. The Swedes gave us lagom, the idea of approaching everything in moderation, and the gentle art of death cleaning, in which you eliminate extraneous stuff now rather than leaving it for your heirs to clean up. Now we can thank the Dutch for niksen, a wellness trend that means doing nothing. That’s right. Nothing.
Olga Mecking is the journalist who brought niksen to the world’s attention in 2021 with her book Niksen: Embracing the Dutch Art of Doing Nothing. She defines niksen as “doing nothing without a purpose.” That “without a purpose” part is critical because that immediately eliminates activities like watching trashy TV or scrolling through Instagram or even meditation. Niksen, Mecking notes, is about letting your mind wander wherever it wants to go. Niksen is daydreaming without judgment.
It’s a concept that can have particular resonance for baby boomers exploring how to live their next chapter. After decades of working and raising families, figuring out how to fill hours in a day can leave boomers feeling a bit unmoored. After all, they need to do something meaningful, right?
But while doing nothing might have the Puritans turning in their graves, studies show that taking time to just sit and be in the moment actually helps people’s mental, spiritual and even physical health. Just as taking breaks during the workday or in the middle of a tough project often helps rejuvenate us and can help us find solutions to tricky problems, sitting back and just being in the moment can help us more fully appreciate where we are and how we want to live.
Realizing that it takes time to figure out next steps might be exactly what boomers need to do to ease into their third act. And, here’s a really radical thought: Maybe, just maybe, doing nothing may become a part of your regular retirement routine.
“Niksen can help you figure out what’s next,” Mecking says, noting that understanding our new retirement identities is part of the process. “I’m done with work now, so what am I going to do next? Maybe nothing, but maybe something different from the work I used to do. Niksen is great to help with creative idea generation.
“For productivity, we understand at some point our bodies need to rest. For our brains, we don’t think that,” Mecking continues. “We think they should work at 100 percent capacity all the time, and that’s not possible. A brain needs rest and breaks as well. Doing nothing can actually regenerate ideas.”
Embracing the idea of niksen requires letting go of that puritanical idea that doing nothing is somehow lazy and therefore negative. “Doing nothing has a bad reputation because it’s associated with laziness and laziness (sloth) is one of the seven sins,” Mecking says. “There’s this pressure to always be doing more.”
And thinking of doing nothing as a negative also leads to guilt. “We value hard work and contributing to society,” Mecking says, “but we can also value rest, taking breaks and leisure time. That could help us overcome the guilt.”
Heather Larkin, a professor at University of Albany’s School of Social Work, would like to see society think more holistically about productivity in general. “Our society’s thoughts on productivity (and therefore the people who are productive) are very reductionist,” she says. “It’s about output. Having time for relaxation and appearing to do nothing — all of these things are part of a whole person’s life and well-being.”
We all would benefit, she says, from thinking about productivity and lifestyle as being more on a continuum. “It could be that some time staring at the trees, you’re going to feel better, feel inspired,” Larkin says. There is value, she adds, in just thinking. “You can contribute more meaningfully if you take care of yourself and are not driving yourself all the time.”
Workplaces should be more aware of this and people who are 55 and over could be role models, Larkin says. “Let’s have workplaces thinking about this more holistically. Self-care is part of your workday. Taking a walk in nature, we want you to do that. Doing things like this while at work will make it part of the workday, and that can help with the transition to retirement.”
“The baby boomers are such a powerful generation,” Larkin continues. Focusing more on the whole person and a whole-life perspective could be a way for boomers to help change the societal mindset about taking time to relax and rethink. “It’s an opportunity to lead in a whole new way and set a new tone for society and help younger generations.”
Ideally, Mecking says niksen is not scheduled. “Do it more spontaneously,” she says, noting that waiting in line or sitting on a train can be perfect niksen opportunities. “You could read or scroll through your phone, or you could just sit and look out the window at the landscape. Follow things with your eyes.”
And recognize that while it may feel counterintuitive, being comfortable doing nothing actually takes a bit of practice. Margaret Jelinek Lewis, a psychology professor at Lone Star College in Texas, gave a TED Talk on the hard task of doing nothing. “I have to renew that commitment pretty regularly and remind myself. We’re always supposed to be busy. There’s a pride in being busy culturally that you have to remind yourself that you don’t have to be busy all the time. You can say ‘No’ to something without saying, ‘No, I don’t have time.’ It’s just something I’m choosing not to do.”
And if you still doubt the benefits of just sitting, consider the words of that iconic advice-giver, Winnie the Pooh. “Doing nothing,” he said, “often leads to the very best something.”
Getting Started
Niksening doesn’t require special equipment. Here are three steps from Olga Mecking to help you start doing nothing:
- Resist the culture of busyness.
- Don’t be apologetic about what you’re (not) doing.
- Niksen, like most things, takes practice. You may only be able to sit back and let your mind wander for a couple minutes at first. Give it time. In a world where we all start scrolling on our phones within seconds of standing in line or sitting down in our seats before a show, it may take a few attempts to realize you can just sit there and look around instead.
Top image: iStockphoto.com/BartekSzewczyk.
