Want more free time? Danes, Spaniards, and Belgians have most daily play time

Workers in Denmark have the most daily leisure time of any of their European neighbors. Even if Danes spent 10 hours a day eating and sleeping, they’d still have just over six hours to watch TV, take a bike ride, or visit a nearby town.

The same goes for residents of Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Norway where residents have more than 15.5 hours devoted to leisure and personal care a day, according to a new interactive index from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

The index defines leisure and personal care as time spent eating, sleeping, socializing, engaging in a hobby, or TV and computer use.

European countries dominate the top of the list, but overworked Americans might be surprised to find that residents in several countries including Japan, Canada, and Mexico have less free time than them.

There was only a small variation in leisure time between countries; 86 percent of residents have between 14 and 16 hours of free time outside of work each day.

The data is by no means comprehensive; countries involved in the survey only include the 34 members of the OECD plus Brazil and Russia.

Country	Leisure and personal time (hours/day)
Denmark	16.06
Spain	15.85
Belgium	15.71
Netherlands	15.66
Norway	15.56
France	15.33
Germany	15.31
Ireland	15.18
Sweden	15.11
Luxembourg	15.05
Hungary	14.9
Finland	14.89
Italy	14.89
New Zealand	14.87
Russia	14.84
Brazil	14.84
UK	14.83
Switzerland	14.78
Slovakia	14.78
Portugal	14.71
Greece	14.65
Korea	14.63
Slovenia	14.62
Austria	14.46
Australia	14.41
Czech	14.34
USA	14.27
Canada	14.25
Estonia	14.2
Poland	14.2
Iceland	14.06
Japan	13.96
Israel	13.81
Chile	13.66
Mexico	12.66
Turkey	11.73