The story
Niksen is an ordinary Dutch verb made from niks, the everyday form of niets, 'nothing'. To niksen is to do nothing, and the word is older than its fame. A 1953 article in the Leeuwarder Courant has the comedian Toon Hermans saying he did not mean to go on niksen 'as he has been doing for a year now'. In Dutch it is a mildly lazy word, the kind a parent uses about a teenager on the sofa.
Abroad it started a new career. Around 2019 magazines and newspapers outside the Netherlands presented niksen as a Dutch method against stress and burnout, and in 2021 the writer Olga Mecking published a book called Niksen: Embracing the Dutch Art of Doing Nothing. Many Dutch readers were surprised to learn they had an art.
What makes it hard to translate is the absence of purpose. Idling and loafing both carry a faint reproach, and mindfulness asks you to pay attention. Niksen asks for nothing: you look out of the window and let your mind go where it likes.
A scene: a Sunday afternoon in Haarlem, rain on the skylight. Someone lies on the sofa with a cup of tea going cold, watching the drops race down the glass. There is a book on the table, unopened. When a housemate asks what they are doing, the answer is: 'Niks. Gewoon niksen.'
The past participle, for the record, is genikst.