What a refreshingly thorough book Olga Mecking's Niksen: Embracing the Dutch Art of Doing Nothing is! I'd expected a thorough explanation of the Dutch concept of Niksen and a solid case for why "doing nothing" is important, effective, and healthful. It's all there. What sets this book apart from those with similar titles is that Mecking - a well regarded writer whose work has been published in the New York Times, The Atlantic, and myriad other newspapers and magazines worldwide - lets the reader know when Niksen isn't particularly applicable. Rather than make a "one-size fits all" sort of declaration, Mecking skillfully recognizes that one's personality, preferences, circumstances, and culture all make such a prescriptive approach inapplicable. I found appealing the seasoned rationale on why Niksen is worthy of serious consideration, its benefits, and useful suggestions to implement it consistent with one's own liking and lifestyle.

I had high hopes going into this book, mostly because I think that it is important that people learn to really do nothing, but this book didn't really follow through on the why or how though.
Which made it feel more like a new trendy thing rather than something that we should be trying to implement into our lives for the long term.

If you're looking for a book that feels more like it's written for the long term I'd recommend "How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy" by Jenny Odell

So you’ve Konmari’ed your entire house (or at least have a drawer of items that spark joy and a closet that is best forgotten), what’s next? Why not try Niksen? It’s the Dutch art of doing nothing translated into a new American act of decluttering your mind. Or, according to the Dutch, possibly vice versa.

“We strive to be everything, for everyone, at all times. Being a modern-day human is exhausting.”

Niksen could be the answer.

“Simply doing nothing can be enormously beneficial, especially for those of us who, like me, feel overwhelmed by our responsibilities.”

Doing nothing can ultimately make us more productive by avoiding burnout, and encouraging us to work more carefully and deliberately.

I love the idea of niksen. Whenever I need a break from life, instead of “daydreaming” I can be “niksening”. It just sounds more purposeful.

Unfortunately, and perhaps to lengthen an article into book size, the author throws many side topics into the mix. You don’t learn how to include niksen in your life until well over halfway through the book. However, the largest aside about Dutch culture was one of my favorite parts of the book.

Though Niksen, the book, is a rambling, seemingly random trip through the author’s mind and life, I still like the idea of decluttering my mind. 3 stars.

Thanks to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for my honest review.

(Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book!)

I don't often tend to read self-help books, or books that focus on wellness trends, but I had to get my hands on this one, since it evolved around Dutch culture, which has become such an important part of my life over the last year and a half.
And that, I enjoyed. The small tid-bits of Dutch culture we got, I mean. They weren't much, but they were something.
I also enjoyed the talk of niksening, or doing (literally) nothing for the better of yourself and your mental health. It was very well integrated in the `go go go` concept on which today's society is based, and the end of each chapter came with some nice questions you could brood over. That was cool.
However, what I did find out is that niksen will never be an option for me. Not long-time niksen, at least. And that, as the author says, is completely fine.
I would recommend you to pick up this book if you want to try a new wellness trend that is not as much focused on making the most of your time and not as toxic as those that are mainly being promoted now, but that would be about it,

I really wanted to like this book, as I’ve liked other books on similar topics, such as tidying up and hygge, but this one fell short for me. I was expecting something a bit easier to digest, the research was informative but felt bulky. This may be partially because I was reading an advanced copy, so the formatting wasn’t as easy to follow as the finished copy.

I went into this one expecting something that would be easy to read and reflect the idea of “doing nothing” a bit more, and instead was sometimes overwhelmed by the research and ideas. I appreciated all the information, but it left me feeling less relaxed than I was hoping given the topic.

I would pick up a finished copy, as I think being able to hold this final copy in my hands, see the size and have the ability to flip through the pages would help set my expectations to the correct standard and approach for the contents. I really like the idea of “doing nothing” and understand how taking time out of the day to recharge and daydream is helpful, but when I was reading the ARC I didn’t feel charged up and ready to practice the technique.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. First of all, I liked the format a lot. The illustrations were beautiful and the sections of the book were organized in a friendly, easy to read way. I love the voice of the book as well. It felt more like a conversation the author was having with you as the reader, instead of most “self-help” books, where it feels like the author is talking at you or telling you what to do. The vibes of this book were very chill and comforting.
I enjoyed how the book taught me about Dutch culture and practical ways to savor my time spent truly relaxing and doing nothing. It’s very easy to fall into the workaholism trap of today’s capitalist societies and hustle cultures, and she makes it easy to take advantage of a few minutes here and there to clear your mind throughout the day. I also appreciated that she acknowledged how niksen may not be for everyone. It was a breath of fresh air.
The only inconsistency I noticed was that the author said Niksen is not mindfulness, but towards the end she suggests practicing grounding techniques and noticing your surrounding as a way to practice niksen; but this is a way to practice mindfulness as well.
All in all, the benefits of “niksen-ing” presented in this book made me notice how I spend my time more, and I will try to consciously “do nothing” more often.

Niksen is a new concept to me, but this book explains the "Dutch Art of Doing Nothing" well and gives practical ways you can use it in your daily life. In this today's fast-paced world it's something we can use more than ever and I look forward to keeping this in mind next time I need to slow down.
Many thanks to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and NetGalley for the advance copy.

'Niksen' was my non-fiction read for the month, and I'm glad I chose to read it. This is a good, light book that can be read before bed and/or to get motivated in your journey of mindfulness and self-realization. Most of us live fast-paced lives, and we are always on the go. I wanted to read this book especially during this time when I've been "forced" to do nothing due to lockdowns and curfews in the covid era. And it has been extremely difficult and uncomfortable every. single. time. In this context, Olga Mecking does a good job of introducing the concept of "Niksen", doing nothing. Her examples from the Dutch culture, too, are inspiring, but I do think that this could've been a shorter book; it does feel a bit padded. Other than that, like most of the books in this genre, it is informative, enlightening, and pretty straight-forward.

Can doing nothing be enormously beneficial specially for the busy people ? yes and it is called Niksen in Dutch. Niksen comes from a word Niks which means nothing and Niksen means doing nothing.

Is it really hard to sit around somewhere and do nothing ? it can be quite challenging for people who are in the habit of working for long hours and do think that they shouldn’t waste time by sitting idle. The author says that one of the reasons Niksen is so hard is because we feel ashamed when we engage in activities that are apparently less productive.

What is niksening or Niksen ?
The author says that Niksening is downtime, quiet time, finding a moment to unwind and relax, and may reflect a little.

But it is not Niksening if you are doing any work passively, if your job requires a lot of thinking it doesn’t mean that you are not working. It also doesn’t mean sitting at one place and starting worrying about something. It’s neither mindfulness nor watching tv or phone.

I think that it’s mostly a problem in big cities where people do not have enough time to sit alone and do nothing. People in smaller cities, towns, villages have enough time to sit idle.

Not much of interest here. Good for a few laughs though. I am not the target audience for this title I am sure. In this year of Covid I believe I have already mastered the art.

What I liked:

It was a breath of fresh air to encounter a writer of a wellness book who wholeheartedly acknowledged that their strategy wasn't going to work for everyone, even if it was really simple. There's basically an entire chapter devoted to that topic and she takes the time to recommend similar but different alternatives for a few example cases.

I also liked all of the examples of Dutch culture throughout the book, and especially insights into things that have worked (or not) for the author before, and how a lot of this was due to where she lives, the Netherlands. (Though of course she's careful to emphasize that you don't have to be Dutch to practice Niksen).

What I didn't like:

Like a lot of books of this type, it felt really padded out to me. I don't think it had to be a book-length thing, though I acknowledge that getting all this information into a single article would have been tough as well.

I also didn't like how much she relied on Gretchen Rubin throughout. I have the impression by the end of this book that the two authors have at least a somewhat close relationship, because they seem to be in regular contact with one another. That's not an issue of course, but it seemed like at every turn the author would try to emphasize her points by pointing out the ways Gretchen Rubin agreed with her. Maybe other readers would disagree, but it was just too much of an appeal to authority for me.

Overall:

The book was too long, and for this reason I found much of it lacked substance. However, I would definitely say that the author did a great job of explaining exactly what Niksen is, why it's tough to do it, and how you can do more of it (and why you might actually not want to). So, I'd say for anyone interested in books about strategies for slowing down and improving general mental health it's a good one, but it wouldn't be my go-to recommendation either.

I can soooo relate. I have been wanting to find time to just stop and watch the clouds pass over head, of watch a sunset, or a moon rise... Just sit quietly and do nothing. It certainly is hard to give yourself permission to do that, isn't it? I have heard it said that the Dutch are the happiest people on earth and I always thought it was the sprinkle! Seriously, who wouldn't be happy eating sprinkles on toast, butter bread, whatever! Then there is this this book- permission granted to just sit and be still in the moment. Most of us aren't trained to sit still and just daydream. My family was keeping busy working! Every. Moment. Of. The. Day. If one had time to sit, something wasn't being done! We were assigned work. Never ended. Just exhausting! I could be happy doing nothing. And with sprinkles on toast to keep me company, I'd be the happiest person on earth, too! Lovely book! I need to really slow down and sit still. I think we all do, actually. Covid-19 had ground things to a pretty nice halt. Maybe now is the time to get centered?

Many an off-day my (not-Dutch) friend would text me asking what I was up to, to which my answer would be ‘nothing’. And almost every time he would tell me to get of my lazy ass (after which I would inform him there is absolutely nothing wrong with my ass).

And then I saw this book on Netgalley and I just Had to read it. Because 1) I liked confirmation that I am not lazy, 2) I like to read/hear/see how other countries see us Dutchies, 3) how can one write 250 pages about doing nothing, and 4) if this doing nothing could make me happy, I needed to more about it.

And so I started this book. And foremost, Olga can definitely write. She has a very pleasant ‘voice’, making this an incredibly easy, accessible and just fun book. And sure, there were parts I couldn’t relate to. I don’t have kids, I don’t work in an office, … and still she managed to make even those paragraphs interesting.

However, I couldn’t quite connect to it. I spend a lot of the book thinking ‘yes, but…’. And that but was answered about 70% into the book. Because, the main reason I do nothing isn’t because I am taking a break. It is because I cannot motivate myself to get out of bed, so am just staring at the ceiling counting down the time till it is acceptable to go back to sleep. Until I inevitably have to go and take a piss.

Niksen is ‘doing something without a purpose’, allowing your mind to wander. It isn’t watching a movie, scrolling on Facebook, procrastinating, mindfulness or emotional labor. And guess what, the last thing I want on those days is for my mind to go wandering about. And luckily Olga says: ‘Just like any other trend, niksen may not work for everyone. [It] is simply not a good idea in some circumstances.’ One of those circumstances is being depressed, burnt-out, down, unmotivated (to get out of bed).

So, did I just read a book that book for nothing? Well, no… For one, I really liked the chapter about Dutch culture and send so many screenshots of it to my (not-Dutch) husband. Two, I won’t be down forever. I hope. So even though this book isn’t applicable to me now, it still made me aware of a ‘tool’ I could use in future. Three, the cheats.

Not everyone can just go and do nothing. So Olga showed us some things we can do whilst doing nothing, things that don’t take much thinking capacity, cheating our brain. Like listening to music, creating something (colouring, puzzling, knitting), and going for a walk. And guess what, I already do the later two… whilst listening to my audiobooks. So maybe there is hope yet for this Dutchie to one day master the Art of Doing Nothing.

I was so excited for this one and I expected to love it, however it fell flat for me. I think I hyped it up to be like the little book of hygge, which I adored. However Niksen did absolutely nothing for me.

A delightful book that can help anyone find a way to relax using small bits of time & learning the art of doing nothing. I loved all the great ideas in the book.

Like many other readers, I really enjoyed Meik Wiking's book on the Danish wellness concepts/ practices of Hygge and Lykke. So when I saw Niksen, by Olga Mecking, a book purporting to be about a Dutch lifestyle/ wellness practice, I was intrigued. And then I was delighted to be approved for an advanced digital copy from #NetGalley and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. The artistic layout of the book is attractive, and the concept of purposefully doing nothing sounded not only good in general, but especially good for the nonstop, ever growing stressors of life in 2020.

Here's the thing, though. Not only did readers like myself enjoy Wiking's books and similar, but publishers and authors presumably enjoyed the hype and sales that went along with those books. And so marketing another book as similar to those books became an increasing likelihood. Which would be fine, if that's what the book was actually about. But I realized early on in the book, actually in the foreword by the author, that this book is not like those previous popular books. Why? Because those books were about recognized Danish concepts and practices. Whereas Niksen is a concept made up by an author who is not Dutch, and who has admittedly only lived in the Netherlands for ten years. Regardless of her argument that being an outsider allows her to observe more objectively observe what the Dutch DO, not what they think they do, I still feel there's a basic level of disingenuousness in presenting and marketing a book as being about a Dutch practice when Mecking herself says in the introduction, "Critics, most of them Dutch, have accused me of pulling a trend out of thin air." If the people you are writing about tell you it isn't a practice in their culture, then maybe you should listen to them.

Does this make the concept of doing nothing a bad one? No, and I'm sure that the rest of the book lays out a lot of useful tips on how the practice of doing nothing can contribute to our overall well-being. However, that makes it a book about a wellness principle and practice, not a specifically Dutch cultural practice. Mecking goes on to say in the introduction "As you will find out, many cultures have some concept of doing nothing." If this is a general concept common to many cultures, why not write it and market it as such? Was this merely a decision by cynical publishers? Or a good faith but questionable approach originating with the author?

Either way, I found I had lost interest in the book, and did not read further than the introduction. I will probably try to find writing on the actual subject--the benefit of spending time specifically doing nothing, or as Mecking says, a practice that "does not mean to work, to perform emotional labor, or to be mindful." Mecking cites another author in the introduction, Jenny Odell, who wrote "How to do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy," and I may go look that book up instead, as I know what to expect with a title like that, and won't be receiving something misleadingly marketed as a cultural practice of a specific country.

Thanks anyway to #NetGalley and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for this temporary digital advanced readers' copy of #Niksen by Olga Mecking. This is my honest opinion.

Well written and informative as to why it is important for us to take breaks and do nothing. Not only explaining what doing nothing does to our brains but how it can affect our moods and productivity. I binged this read and thoroughly enjoyed it and even recommended it to friends to pre-order it. Didn't expect it to be such an easy read but also so insightful too as to why this is so culturally important in the Netherlands but why it also needs to be implemented elsewhere in other countries. Also, I enjoyed that Olga took time to acknowledge that not everyone would benefit from niksen and why those people wouldn't benefit. Definitely a well thought out book and a very valuable read.

We’ve all seen those trendy lifestyle books based a specific aspect of certain cultures: hygge, ikigai, lagom… and now “niksen”, which is apparently the Dutch art of doing nothing.
I picked up an advance reader’s copy of this book because I was curious what it would be like to read about Dutch culture from an outsider’s perspective, and because I'm always looking for new books on being more mindful and staying off my phone. It was certainly interesting and mostly accurate (we do love us some bitterballen), but as a born-and-raised Dutch person, I can assure you that “niksen” is a concept that was made up to cash in on the current trend of lifestyle books, and is not something that anyone here would consider a vital part of our culture. I felt like the book was more of a celebration of Dutch culture rather than actually being about the concept of doing nothing.
(If you want to see peak Dutch culture in action, get yourself invited to a kringverjaardag (a birthday party where all the chairs are set up in a circle) where, after congratulating each and every guest with the birthday of the jarige, you can enjoy blokjes jong belegen kaas (little blocks of cheese, often with tiny paper Dutch flags in them) and plakjes leverworst (sausage slices) while talking to someone's neighbor or relative about God knows what, feeling completely and utterly uncomfortable.)

I frequently found myself bored by this book and I really had to force myself to pick it back up every day. I was relieved when it was over. The book was too long and repetitive, and after reading a chapter I felt like I read nothing of substance. This book could have stayed the article it originally was.

I liked that the author emphasized that “niksen” isn’t for everyone. It may work for you, it may not. For my ADHD brain, it does not. Brb gonna hand in my Dutch passport. :(

I guess I’d recommend it to people who are interested in the Netherlands, but not necessarily to people who are interested in learning to do nothing. Check these out instead: How to Break Up with Your Phone: The 30-Day Plan to Take Back Your Life is a good one about reducing your smartphone use, and on my to-read list is How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy, about actually doing nothing.

Cute idea but I anticipated a more casual read with lighter information and it felt like a research paper. Interesting idea but requires investment

This is a sweet little book about the supposed Dutch habit of Niksen, which the author says is the art of doing nothing and which she admits is a concept that many Dutch people have accused her of making up. It has come at a time when there are lots of similar books being written, all designed to convince us there's a happy magic to be found in just slowing down and not doing so much. I agree with this, but I don't think I'm the target audience as I already live this sort of life. Despite working from home and homeschooling 5 kids (2 graduated now) and living a pretty busy old fashioned life (foraging, gardening, canning, cooking from scratch and the like), I am remarkably capable at doing very little on a regular basis. :) I lie in hot baths reading books on my iPad, sit in the sun in the back yard with my 17 y/o getting sunshine, spend the afternoon at the lake with the kids and so on.

Reading this book seemed like as much a primer on Dutch life (and to some extent, why it's all better over there) as concrete ideas for "niksing." It has cute illustrations and is interesting, but I found it rather forgettable, unfortunately. It would be a great fit for someone who needs to be convinced to put down their iPhone, start saying no to extra commitments (which I suspect the pandemic has helped many do anyway) and just slow down. If you need someone to tell you why this might be a good idea or point you in some good directions to start, this will be a handy and encouraging little book.

I read a temporary digital ARC of this book for review.