Carlos Solis
Burnout is the extreme, chronic form of stress: mental and emotional exhaustion, fatigue, and physical symptoms such as headaches or stomach pain. The problem isn’t only that we work too much — it’s that we forget to recover. A culture of constant self-improvement and nonstop busyness trains us to view “doing nothing” as failure. The brain often disagrees; sometimes it needs free rein to let thoughts drift.
The Dutch have a word for that: niksen, which roughly translates as “doing nothing.” It means intentionally spending time without a goal and without trying to produce a result. Sometimes the brain needs exactly that.
How niksen affects the brain
A 2024 review in Frontiers showed that boredom and curiosity act together as drivers of information-seeking. Boredom works like a hunger for stimulation, while curiosity works like an appetite for specific information. Letting your thoughts wander sometimes gives the brain space to process information and recover. Another 2024 study found that free, unguided mind-wandering helps creativity.
French mathematician Henri Poincaré described something similar: after he got stuck on a problem and went about his day, the solution would suddenly surface while he was traveling and distracted. No external clues — just background, associative thinking that allowed hidden combinations to form.
How do you shake intrusive thoughts?
Niksen doesn’t mean boredom is always healthy. Chronic boredom — especially in uninteresting work or isolation — can be damaging. For people with severe anxiety, depression, trauma, or acute burnout, open-ended idle mind-wandering can make things worse.
But niksen isn’t just lying in a funk. It’s deliberate idling: not to “recharge” for more productivity, not to squeeze usefulness out of a break, but to let the mind roam freely.
If intrusive thoughts keep returning, pick an anchor — something that brings you back to the moment: watching trees, observing people, or a simple hands-on distraction like knitting or drawing. You can also practice niksen during light activity, for example while jogging.
How to practice niksen
The first rule of niksen: don’t treat it like a contest or another productivity hack. You don’t need a perfect pose or the “right” mood.
- Start small. Two minutes is a good initial target. Look out the window. Really look. What do you see? Does anything remind you of something? Is anything visually pleasing?
- Sit on a bench in a park or near water—great options. A cafe, with its smells and background noise, also works. The key is no screens and permission for your thoughts to wander.
- Practice niksen in short pockets of time: between emails, after lunch, before you open your laptop, while the kettle boils.
- Don’t expect dramatic revelations. More often you’ll just notice a calmer nervous system that’s better prepared for the day.
Niksen pushes back against the idea that a person’s value equals productivity. It functions as both a personal practice and a cultural critique. Maybe we aren’t the ones who broke — maybe the system did. In a world prone to burnout, recovery can begin with the small permission to do nothing.
Based on material from ZME Science
Photo: pixabay.com
