If you lived in the Netherlands, you’d have a 3-day weekend coming up

Here’s a thought: If you lived in The Netherlands you would be a few hours from the weekend right now.

No, it’s not a special long weekend to mark a great battle or someone’s birthday. 

The four-day workweek is "nearly standard" in the country of 17 million people, CNN Money reported. 

The average Dutch person worked just 30.1 hours per week in 2014 — the shortest workweek among more than 30 mostly European countries, according to the OECD. The data covers the entire workforce.

That leaves them with plenty of time to do things like this. 

Compare that to the average American, who worked 34.5 hours per week.

The Dutch work even less than the Greeks, who clocked up an average of 41.9 hours a week at the office last year. Which just goes to show that long hours do not guarantee economic prosperity. 

Even Australians, who are known for their love of weekends and holidays, worked more hours than their Dutch counterparts— a total of 36 hours toiling away at their jobs each week in 2014.

It wasn’t always this way. Back in 1870 it was the Dutch who were the ones putting in the hard yards, working significantly more than people in the United States and Australia, according to the International Labor Organization. 

Over the next 100 years or so the Dutch wisened up. By 2000 their working hours had shrunk by nearly 60 percent. And, contrary to what you might think, working less hasn't been bad for the economy. "This reduction of working hours coincided with economic progress," the ILO said. And the Dutch are a consistently happy bunch. 

The Netherlands is not the only country offering a shorter-than-normal workweek. The Gambia cut the working week to four days for public sector workers in 2013 to allow more time for prayer, hanging out with friends and family, and farming.

Even the United States, where working excessively long hours is expected in many companies, has experimented with the four-day workweek. Utah government employees began working four 10-hour days during the Great Recession to reduce costs and avoid painful job cuts.

Four days is still a far cry from the 15-hour workweek envisioned by economist John Maynard Keynes in 1930, and significantly more than evolutionary biologist John Huxley’s prediction for a two-day workweek.

But it beats the hell out of the current 40-plus-hour, five-day workweek. 

"The human being can consume so much and no more," Huxley said in 1930, CNN Money reported. "When we reach the point when the world produces all the goods that it needs in two days, as it inevitably will, we must curtail our production of goods and turn our attention to the great problem of what to do with our new leisure."

Many workers are hoping that day comes sooner rather than later.