Come, Let’s Do Nothing!

Doing something all the time

A poem I wrote in 2019, No Time to Rush, reads in part
“… I ran after this Important Thing yesterday,
and another
Important Thing
after that
and yet one more after that…”

This relentless chase to do the next thing; this hustle and bustle is the norm for most of us in today’s society. We are constantly doing something ; performing one task after another, juggling deadlines and time-bound commitments. We run from one ‘thing’ to the next – sometimes literally – as we race to keep up, trying not to forget all the tasks we have to complete. The attendant stress pushes us to look for ways to better manage our tasks.

To-do lists

Enter the idea of ‘to-do’ lists. A 2008 survey found that people tried to mitigate this stress by writing down the things they needed to do. More than three-quarters of people surveyed in the US reported a dependency on to-do lists. 76% of the respondents kept at least one list, while some managed three or more lists at the same time. This dependency on to-do lists exists worldwide to a significant extent.

Then there are people like me who are knee-deep in to-do lists. I keep separate to-do lists for work and home. I also have a grocery list, a list of places I want to visit, and a vacation checklist. Let’s not forget my lists of bills to pay, books to read, and plants for my garden – the lists go on and on.  My wife would often tease me about it. “You have so many lists, you need a list of lists to manage them all,” she would say with a laugh, “with the time you spend on your lists, I’m surprised you have any time left to work on the actual tasks!”.

The National Get Organized Month movement began in 2005 to promote the notion that “a bit of organization can make even the most chaotic of spaces relatively manageable.” We are not reducing tasks, but adding ‘productivity tools’ that also take time to manage. When you and I create a need, others see an opportunity. The global task management software market was $1.7 billion in 2018 and is projected to reach $4.5 billion by 2026!

Deal with stress and burnout – Do nothing

If we don’t find effective ways to cope with all the things we need to do – and manage or mitigate the stress of this seemingly endless treadmill – we risk the danger of burnout and adverse impacts on our physical and mental wellbeing. There are many popular coping techniques that people find effective: mindfulness practices, meditation, exercise, taking time off, establishing boundaries, and detaching psychologically from what you are doing, to name a few. I want to tell you about an interesting approach that is recently gaining popularity – do nothing – that is attributed to the Dutch.

Niksen

The Dutch practice of Niksen was brought to the attention of the rest of the world in 2019 by Olga Mecking, a writer, journalist, and translator based in the Netherlands with her New York Times article The Case for Doing Nothing . Mecking defines Niksen as “doing nothing without a purpose.” Huh? What’s that? What exactly is Niksen?

“It’s difficult to define what doing nothing is, because we are always doing something, even when we’re asleep,” Mecking says. The word niks means nothing in Dutch. “With niksen, which most closely translates as ‘nothing-ing’ in Dutch, you have to be intentional about doing nothing,” she says.  So, if we are ‘niksen,’ or ‘nothing-ing,’ we are making time for doing nothing, and doing it with purpose. It is about just being, letting your mind wander, without any focus on whatever it is that you are doing.

We usually associate outcomes with our actions. Are we cooking evening dinner because it’s healthy? Will we go for a walk to get our steps in? Or are we just enjoying dinner and a stroll with no expectations attached? To just enjoy the evening? I once observed a group of ladies around a table, knitting away, laughing, and talking. None paid any attention to their knitting. Their motor memories handled that task.

Practicing niksen

“Practicing niksen could be as simple as just hanging around, looking at your surroundings or listening to music — as long as it’s without purpose,” says Carolien Hamming, managing director of CSR Centrum , a coaching center in the Netherlands that helps clients manage stress and recover from burnout. Niksen gives us what people leading constantly busy lives crave: an explanation for what’s missing – the presence of nothing in our lives . Niksen is about letting go of the outcome.

Mecking has written a popular book on the topic: Niksen: Embracing the Dutch Art of Doing Nothing . So have a few other authors. “Whereas mindfulness is about being present in the moment,” Mecking says, “niksen is more about carving out time to just be, letting your mind wander wherever it wants to go. She points out that paradoxically, niksen can also make us more productive, simply because breaks allow our brains to rest and come back with better focus and sustained attention.

Come, let’s niksen!

Each of us needs to find those practices that enable us to successfully step off our treadmills – get out of our mouse-wheel cages on a regular basis. Perhaps we should try something different? Try niksen?

I think I’ll give it a shot. However, I first have to make a new entry in my list of lists: a to don’t list. It will be a blank page.

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