As I am a person who frequently intends to do nothing (or at any rate as little as possible), I wondered if there was a word meaning "the act of intending to do nothing".
I had the impression that floccinaucinihilipilification meant this, but sadly it turns out not to be so.
Not sure about "the act of intending to do nothing", but idling is the "act of doing nothing":
v.intr.
1. To pass time without working or while avoiding work.
2. To move lazily and without purpose.
3. To run at a slow speed or out of gear. Used of a motor vehicle.
v.tr.
1. To pass (time) without working or while avoiding work; waste: idle the afternoon away.
2. To make or cause to be unemployed or inactive.
3. To cause (a motor, for example) to idle.
n.
1. A state of idling. Used of a motor vehicle: an engine running quietly at idle.
2. A mechanism for regulating the speed at which an engine runs at rest: set the idle >higher to keep the motor from stalling.
You could get a subscription of The Idler and read it in the Idle Working Mens Club. (Although that sounds a bit too much like hard work.)
As Hugo said, including the "intending to" makes this a very difficult request; the best I can come up with is a way to express "intentionally doing nothing": vegetating.
I'm gonna go home and vegetate tonight.
To me this carries much more of a connotation of purposefully doing nothing, whereas idling can be merely the result of having nothing to do, rather than a conscious choice not to do something.
I suggest abstain:
to hold oneself back voluntarily, especially from something regarded as improper or unhealthy (usually followed by from ): to abstain from eating meat.
We students love the word SLACK. OH YEAH!
What's the context? The phrase,
I'm sitting it out,
means you won't be taking part in this dance, or metaphorically, won't be taking part in whatever activity, conflict, or dispute is under discussion.
How about procrastination?
Well, analyzing the question, it seems to be a little ambiguous: The other answers' side of view is that you are lazy, but there's another point of view, in which you're passive.
Let me explain better, this is what people got from your question (example):
I prefer not to work; I want to do nothing but sit there and relax.
Many words could fit: loaf, laziness, lethargy (though more commonly used with pathological meaning)...
But the other point is:
He's being hurt, but I intend to do nothing.
In this case, passive or liable could fit well.
And even another point (as you said in parentheses):
I believe this can be done in a way far much easier, and as I intend to do as little work as possible, I'll do it the easier way.
In this case, the best terms would be practical or non-perfectionist.
Watch out for to procrastinate; it isn't the same as do nothing.
You should strive to apply the utmost velleity to the situation in hand.
velleity noun — a wish or inclination not strong enough to lead to action.
Accidie is my favourite in this area, but it really just means laziness. Anomie (or anomy) is more promising: from the Greek for 'lack of law', it can mean lack of direction, and hence inability to do anything:
We are facing a condition of anomie, of planlessness in living, which is becoming characteristic both of individual lives and of communities.
But it appears to have been infected by sociology:
B. Wootton Social Sci. & Social Pathol. ii. 69 " Sociologists have thought it worth while to coin a special term—‘anomie’—to describe the unorthodox social values, norms and attitudes to which ‘underprivileged’ children may be conditioned."
Besides this, I have a shrewd suspicion that what OP is actually looking for is "intending to do nothing but drink beer" for which the technical term is weekend.
The OED records nihilagent as an obsolete word for 'a person who does nothing', but there is no corresponding noun, and even nihilagency, I'm afraid, doesn't get across the sense of intention.
If you are having fun doing nothing, dolce far niente is a good candidate.
literally means "sweet doing nothing" = "Delicious idleness". Sheer indulgent relaxation and blissful laziness, being deliciously idle.
Perhaps I'm misinterpreting, but the words I immediately thought of were lethargy, apathy, and laziness.
Also, loitering.
How is "shiftlessness" or "remissness"?
Shiftlessness, noun of adjective shiftless:
- a. Lacking ambition or purpose; lazy: a shiftless student.
b. Characterized by a lack of ambition or energy: studied in a shiftless way.- Lacking resourcefulness or efficiency; incompetent.
Remissness, noun of adjective remiss:
- Lax in attending to duty; negligent.
- Exhibiting carelessness or slackness. See Synonyms at negligent.
"Killing time" covers the intent and the action parts, though I have to say that it is hard to make a case for a separate word that means the "act of intending to do X". As Yoda might say, "X or not X, there is no intend (unless X=intend)"
I instantly think of resignation. It's more or less the intent to do nothing.
verb: not do something.
Like most of the answers, I'm going to somewhat ignore the "intending" part of the question. I believe the OP may have meant "deliberately" doing nothing, rather than planning to deliberately do nothing in the future.
Therefore, I suggest "meditating", which refers to a variety of practices that are actually probably pretty different from one another, but many of which could be thought of as doing nothing in about as deliberate and focused a way as is possible for doing nothing.
Indolence is a synonym of of idleness or laziness.
Inertia is the resistance or disinclination to move or act.
Faineance means do-nothingness; inactivity; indolence.
There can not be a word for the act of intending to do nothing, an intention to act is implicit, and to act is to not do nothing, even if the result of that act is nothing.
It is impossible to do nothing, you are always doing something, no matter how usless, be it sleeping, watching paint die, or being dead.
The question is a solophisticaly tautological oxymoron.
You may however prefer indolent or try Benjamin Hoffman's The Tao of Pooh.
Quiesce - the first step to quietude. Unlike actually doing nothing, or not doing anything, 'quiesce' signals the act of moving to stillness. To be unambiguous, one could say auto-self-quiesce.
I am not in the position to re-read the novel Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov right now, but this man's motto seems to coincide with the posed question. It is:
Deliberate passiveness in all aspects of life.
