Paul Little: Forget hygge - the Dutch have given us niksen. But does it work?

COMMENT:

The list of Dutch inventions that have changed the world is not a long one.

There is their notorious elm disease, of course, their auction system and their method for splitting the bill on dates. Although you might expect it to have originated in Belgium, the Brussels sprout is a Dutch creation from the 13th century. More recently there has been a spate of tech innovations from cassettes to Wi-Fi, but apart from that, not much.

Until now.

Niksen: The Dutch Art of Doing Nothing by Carolien Janssen is a book that has been around since early last year, but seems to have reached critical mass in international media just recently. I'm not sure what the writers and publishers have done to make this happen — not much, probably.

It is what the label says — an argument for doing nothing.

It's both surprising that there was a whole book to be written about doing nothing and impressive that an advocate for inactivity could be bothered writing it.

Niksen is intended to be stress-reducing. That will depend on your personality. For some of us, just doing nothing when we are aware that there is so much that needs to be done is enormously stressful.

It's not to be mistaken for mindfulness. Mindfulness requires you to be aware of your surroundings. Niksen wants you to be oblivious. It makes mindfulness look like an endurance sport.

It's also a step beyond hygge — the Danish science of cosiness — which is far too fussy for some people.

"To me, hygge seems comfortable, but also extremely time-consuming," writes Dutch journalist Olga Mecking. "You have to light candles, shop for blankets and loungewear, and include other people in your cosy existence."

I know — exhausting just reading about it, right?

Niksen is perfectly natural and has been going on for years, say its proponents. It just hasn't had the catchy name.

"In the wild most animals do nothing two-thirds of their time," says Dutch stressbuster Carolien Hamming.

"They yawn, look around, sit and wait until a little snack comes by."

And where has that got them? Increasingly extinct, with tens of thousands of species disappearing every year.

Cats, notorious niksen advocates, are an exception, obviously.

Governments of recent years have been practising it with grim results in areas such as housing, income inequality, child poverty, environmental decay and all the other items that make up the familiar dismal litany of perpetual problems.

Niksen is the default setting for dealing with international concerns such as the number of armed conflicts that are killing tens of thousands of people every year.

Facebook practised niksen over its lax data protection policies and now has to pay a US$5 billion fine imposed by the US Federal Trade Commission.

In a rare demonstration of what can happen when niksen is abandoned, Auckland's public transport chiefs in recent years have gone all hands-on to improve the bus system with spectacular results. But this is the exception to the rule.

More often, niksen is a conscious strategy hidden behind a barrage of words that suggest something is being done, although we don't want to rush into anything, matters are in hand, and a working group is being established. Yet, to pick one conspicuous example, there is no sign of that wall being built.

Niksen hasn't helped with the climate crisis, leading one normally somnolent group — scientists — to cease their traditional practice and become unusually exercised and vocal.

This week a group of them called for damage to the environment to be defined as and treated like a war crime.

We shouldn't be surprised by all this. It has been there in the name all along, clear for anyone to see — niksen is not working.