{"id":6182,"date":"2025-10-04T11:07:02","date_gmt":"2025-10-04T05:37:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ksrini.life\/29035f-co-nz\/journal\/?p=6182"},"modified":"2025-10-04T11:07:02","modified_gmt":"2025-10-04T05:37:02","slug":"the-art-of-doing-nothing-have-the-dutch-found-the-answer-to-burnout-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ksrini.life\/29035f-co-nz\/journal\/the-art-of-doing-nothing-have-the-dutch-found-the-answer-to-burnout-culture\/6182\/","title":{"rendered":"The art of doing nothing: have the Dutch found the answer to burnout culture?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Interest in the concept of niksen has grown rapidly over the past five years \u2013 and it has become a publishing sensation. But just how easy is it to let go of all outcomes?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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I<\/span>am standing on the sand at Scheveningen, The Hague\u2019s most famous beach resort, in the act of\u00a0niksen<\/em>, the Dutch term for doing absolutely nothing. I try not to think about whether I am really doing nothing if I am standing on a beach. Maybe I should be sitting down? But then I would be sitting down. How do you niksen\u00a0properly<\/em>? Being effortlessly aimless next to me is Olga Mecking, the author of Niksen: Embracing the Dutch Art of Doing Nothing. In the three years since the book was published, she has become the Netherlands\u2019 go-to authority on doing sod all. I suddenly remember there is a pancake house back on the promenade. Does eating pancakes count as doing nothing, or is it too much like doing something? Maybe I am not cut out for niksen.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s very common, says Mecking, to struggle to define niksen. \u201cThe definition I use in the book is: to do nothing, without a purpose. Not watching a movie, not scrolling social media, not reading emails. We always have in mind some kind of outcome. When we prepare meals, we think, \u2018This meal will help me lose weight or will make me healthier.\u2019 If we go for a walk, it has to be part of our 10,000 steps. So we lose that fun of just eating or just walking. So it\u2019s about letting go of the outcome.\u201d<\/p>\n

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I like this. I am ready to let go of the outcome. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t easy to find a definition,\u201d she adds. \u201cI found any strict definition would make people feel guilty. So many people tell me they feel guilty because they can\u2019t succeed in doing nothing.\u201d And here she has defined exactly why there is a global market for her book.<\/p>\n

A journalist and parenting blogger (she has three children), Mecking is married to a German and lives in The Hague. Although she speaks Dutch fluently, she is Polish. She first encountered the expression niksen in a free supermarket magazine in 2018. She was intrigued that there was no similar verb in any other language she knew. She pitched niksen to the New York Times. When the article \u2013\u00a0The Case for Doing Nothing\u00a0\u2013 was published in 2019, it went viral. Within weeks, she had a publishing deal. The book, designed to sit alongside books on\u00a0hygge<\/em>\u00a0(the Danish art of cosiness) and\u00a0fika<\/em>\u00a0(the Swedish art of the coffee break), came out just as the Netherlands went into its first hard lockdown in late 2020. A typical Amazon review from that year? \u201cPerfect reading if you are struggling with pandemic-related stress.\u201d<\/p>\n

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<\/figcaption>After the pandemic, the cult of niksen lives on. Last month, David Lloyd Leisure \u2013 which has more than 100 fitness clubs in the UK \u2013 announced it was launching\u00a0niksen classes\u00a0to help people \u201crelease tension\u201d. The\u00a0announcement quoted Jan de Jonge, a Dutch psychologist and \u201cniksen expert\u201d. \u201cWellness is so important in our hectic lives, and the Dutch, with their reputation of being laid-back and easy-going, like to niksen after a stressful day\u2019s work.\u201d Over on X, he does add that niksen\u00a0is not an inherently Dutch lifestyle, more a reaction to modern living.<\/figure>\n

There are yet more niksen books from more people who clearly don\u2019t want to take their own advice and do nothing. Niksen: The Dutch Art of Doing Nothing by Annette Lavrijsen. The Lost Art of Doing Nothing: How the Dutch Unwind with Niksen by Maartje Willems and Lona Aalders. Niksen: The Power of Doing Nothing by Tess Jansen. A Dutch Guide to Niksen by Johanna van Elp.<\/p>\n

But just how Dutch is doing nothing, really? And how did the word originate? \u201cNiksen is a media concept, like Blue Monday,\u201d says Ruut Veenhoven, an emeritus professor of social conditions for human happiness at Erasmus University Rotterdam. Blue Monday, the third Monday of January, was once thought to have been \u201ccalculated\u201d to be \u201cthe most depressing day of the year\u201d. It later emerged that the concept was dreamed up by a travel company. Niksen is not quite the same: no one is reminding you to book a package holiday. And Dutch people really do use the verb. Veenhoven admits that the amount of interest in the idea of niksen is telling. \u201cWe are typically the most happy when we are active. And in modern society there are lots of nice things to do. As a result, we do a lot. The pace of life is higher than in non-western societies and the level of life satisfaction is also high and keeps rising. And yet \u2026 A side-effect is that we get into time pressure. And we dream of more relaxation.\u201d Niksen gives us what we crave: an explanation for what\u2019s missing \u2013 the presence of nothing in our lives.<\/p>\n

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Mecking\u2019s book has now been translated into 13 languages and the French are particularly keen on it. (\u201cL\u2019art de ne remplir aucun objectif<\/em>\u00a0\u2026\u201d sighs French Cosmopolitan \u2013 translated as \u201cThe art of not having to fulfil any objective \u2026\u201d) But just because niksen originated in the Netherlands does not mean the Dutch are particularly good at it. \u201cNiksen seems to be considered as a concept in the whole world, except in the Netherlands,\u201d says Carolien Hamming, the founder and CEO of CSR Centrum, a centre for research into stress and resilience just south of Utrecht. \u201cIt has nothing to do with our culture. On the contrary, we\u2019re Calvinists and tell each other to work harder.\u201d<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Mecking interviewed Hamming when she was first researching niksen and Hamming told her that the Dutch are not good at doing nothing. \u201cWe are raised with the belief that we must always be useful and helpful. Niksen is the devil from whom comes nothing good.\u201d She doesn\u2019t blame anyone for being interested in the idea, though, when stress and depression are on the rise. \u201cOur brains are overloaded; we don\u2019t know how to do nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n

When I asked Dutch friends to comment on the meaning of niksen, they said they knew the word but didn\u2019t feel they had any explanation as to what was Dutch about it. But they also made jokes: \u201cSorry, I\u2019m too busy doing nothing to answer.\u201d Mecking herself says that by the time she started writing her book on niksen, another publisher had commissioned another author to write on the same topic. The race was on, and her deadline was pulled forward. Hardly in the spirit of niksen.<\/p>\n

And Hamming is right: it\u2019s not a quintessentially Dutch idea. I couldn\u2019t find any record of use of niksen in the Dutch language before the late 2010s. It is usually categorised as a reaction to relentless work culture which, as dictionary definitions go, seems curiously specific and suggests a recent coinage. I somehow don\u2019t feel it would have been in the vocabulary of the great Dutch artists Vermeer, Rembrandt or Van Gogh, who all argued for the relentless pursuit of intense activity. It is peculiar, though, that this unusual verb (\u201cto nothing\u201d) surfaced in a country that generally regards itself as Calvinist and atheist. Like Hamming, Dutch friends all mumble about Calvinism when I bring up niksen: this branch of 16th-century Protestantism was fervently embraced in the Netherlands. And John Calvin\u2019s values of hard work, frugality, self-discipline and \u201cstraightforwardness\u201d are still highly evident.<\/p>\n

Take the Dutch approach to window blinds and curtains. They don\u2019t use them. When I was walking around The Hague attempting to nonchalantly do nothing, I found it odd that whether people were doing nothing or not, you can see straight into their houses. Openness, too, is a Calvinist hangover: \u201cLook at me. I have nothing to hide.\u201d It is a fascinatingly contradictory cultural impulse: be buttoned-up and follow the rules at all times but also be completely transparent. It\u2019s a weird mix of being required to be regimented but also laid-back at the same time. No wonder you might want to introduce niksen into that mix, to give yourself a break. And no wonder niksen feels \u201cnot Dutch\u201d but also somehow belongs here.<\/p>\n

Perhaps because of the inherent tensions of the Calvinist past, the topic of \u201cburnout\u201d is prevalent in the Netherlands. Last year, a wellbeing study by a health insurance company was widely cited in the Dutch press. The\u00a0Cigna Healthcare Vitality Study\u00a0was based on 10,000 respondents in 12 markets across the world, including the US, Kenya, China and five European countries. The Netherlands came out top. Even though 90% of Dutch employees say they are burnt out, with 27% of people feeling tired and drained as a result, they were still the least stressed of all employees in the study. Although 64% of Dutch respondents experienced stress, this was significantly lower than Belgium, where the figure was 81%. Ruud Wassen, the chief marketing officer of Cigna, who is also Dutch, explains that stress levels are high across Europe after the pandemic and the Netherlands is consistent with that. However, \u201cDutch employees experience relatively less stress when it comes to worries about the cost of living, personal finances and uncertainty about the future.\u201d When it comes to the main reason for the stress, though, the Netherlands is just the same as everywhere else, he says. \u201cToo much work.\u201d<\/p>\n

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