How to make time pass faster at work

Some workdays disappear before you know it. Others seem to have been personally designed to test the limits of human endurance. You finish a task, answer a few emails, glance at the clock and discover that an astonishing seven minutes have passed.

If you’re wondering how to make time pass faster at work, the solution isn’t actually to find increasingly elaborate ways to waste time. In fact, the opposite tends to work better. The more absorbed you become in what you’re doing, the less attention you have available for monitoring the passing minutes.

That means the best way to make time go faster is usually to keep your brain engaged, structure your day well and find ways to become genuinely involved in your work. You obviously can’t make eight hours physically pass any quicker, but you can change your time perception so those hours don’t feel quite so endless.

Here are some practical ways to make your workday feel shorter without sacrificing your productivity or well being.

1. Stop watching the clock

First things first: stop watching the time.

When you’re waiting for something, your attention naturally becomes more sensitive to how long it is taking. The same problem occurs at work. Constant clock watching makes you acutely aware of every minute that passes.

Think about sitting at an airport waiting for a delayed flight. Looking at the departure board every 30 seconds doesn’t make the plane arrive faster. It simply keeps your attention fixed on the delay.

Watching the clock at work can create a similar experience. Instead of becoming absorbed in a task, part of your attention remains occupied with wondering how much longer you have left.

Try setting specific points at which you will check the time instead of repeatedly looking at the clock. Better yet, structure your day around tasks rather than hours: finish a report, take a break, answer your emails, begin another project and then have lunch.

Once you lose track of the exact time, you might be surprised by how quickly the hours start flying.

2. Write a to do list

An unstructured day can feel much longer than a busy one. Creating a to do list gives the day some direction and turns a seemingly enormous stretch of working hours into a sequence of achievable objectives.

Write down what you need to accomplish and identify your first task before you begin working. You can then move through the list rather than wondering what you should do next.

There is another benefit: visible progress.

Crossing off small tasks provides a sense that you are moving through your day. Instead of thinking, “I still have five hours left,” you can think, “I’ve finished four things and have three left.”

Just be realistic. A list containing 47 items can create more anxiety than motivation. Good time management means deciding what genuinely needs to be completed today and what can wait.

3. Use time blocking to divide your day

A long, undefined workday can be intimidating. Time blocking solves this by dividing it into smaller sections.

Rather than thinking about the entire afternoon, assign a time slot to a particular activity. You might block time from 9:00 to 10:30 for focused work, spend 10:30 to 11:00 responding to messages and reserve another block for collaborative efforts.

Each time frame becomes a small target.

This approach can also help maintain focus because you know exactly what deserves your attention at any particular moment. You’re not simultaneously trying to finish a presentation, check email, answer messaging apps and remember five other tasks.

Reducing this kind of context switching can create better focus and make your schedule feel less chaotic.

If you utilize productivity tools, calendars, timers and task-management apps can all make this process easier. The best productivity tools are ultimately the ones that help you concentrate rather than giving you another dashboard to stare at.

4. Try the Pomodoro Technique

If an hour of concentrated work sounds unbearable, make it smaller.

The pomodoro technique traditionally involves working for 25 minutes and then taking a short break before beginning another work interval. The pomodoro method can be particularly helpful when you’re dealing with boring tasks that you’re struggling to begin.

Instead of promising yourself that you’ll spend the next three hours completing data entry, you only need to commit to one focused period.

Then comes break time.

Stand up, refill your water, walk around or step outside. These short breaks give you an opportunity to reset attention before the next period of concentration.

Experiment with the length of each interval, too. Twenty-five minutes is not magical. If 45 or 60 minutes allows you to fully engage with your work, use that instead.

5. Find opportunities for deep work

Being busy and being absorbed are very different experiences.

A day spent bouncing between emails, notifications and administrative jobs can still time drag painfully slowly. By comparison, deep work can occupy so much of your attention that you temporarily forget about everything else.

Try removing unnecessary distractions when you need to concentrate. Put your mobile phone somewhere out of reach, silence non-essential notifications and close communication platforms you don’t currently need.

The objective is to improve focus enough that the work itself occupies your attention.

This is also why constantly trying to look busy by doing random small tasks can backfire. Sitting idly is boring, but so is endlessly moving between trivial jobs without becoming interested in any of them.

Give yourself something substantial to do.

6. Try to achieve flow

The ultimate version of workplace absorption is a flow state.

Flow describes those periods when you become so deeply involved in an activity that your awareness of everything else—including time—seems to fade into the background. When people achieve flow, hours can subjectively feel much shorter.

The trick is finding work that provides enough difficulty to demand your attention without being so difficult that you become overwhelmed. Your skill level therefore matters.

An extremely easy assignment may produce boredom. An impossibly difficult one may produce frustration. Somewhere between the two is a challenge capable of holding your attention.

You can’t force yourself to enter flow every morning at precisely 9:07, but you can create better conditions for it: eliminate distractions, choose engaging tasks, set a clear objective and give yourself uninterrupted time to work.

That’s when time fly becomes more than a figure of speech.

7. Get the least pleasant tasks out of the way

We all have unpleasant tasks we would prefer to avoid.

Unfortunately, postponing the least pleasant tasks can allow them to loom over the entire day. You spend the morning thinking about the spreadsheet you hate, the phone call you don’t want to make or the tedious administration waiting for you at 3pm.

Consider getting them out of the way earlier.

Completing difficult or boring tasks first creates momentum and prevents dread from hanging over your afternoon. Once they’re finished, everything else can seem comparatively easy.

This won’t always be possible—you may have meetings or deadlines dictating your schedule—but when you control your daily routine, putting an annoying job near the beginning can make the rest of the day feel considerably lighter.

8. Make boring work more engaging

Of course, sometimes the job itself is repetitive.

Try turning monotonous work into a small challenge. If you processed 20 invoices in an hour yesterday, can you complete them accurately in 55 minutes today? If you have a pile of administrative work, can you finish one category before your next break?

That doesn’t mean rushing billable work or sacrificing quality simply to beat an arbitrary record. The point is to introduce an objective that keeps you mentally involved.

You can also alternate tedious work with more enjoyable activities where your schedule permits it. Finish an unpleasant administrative job, for example, and then move to a more creative project.

Variety can reduce boredom and prevent a predictable routine from becoming completely mind-numbing.

9. Change your work environment

Sometimes you don’t need a new productivity system. You need a different room.

Your work environment can affect how easy it is to concentrate, particularly when working remotely. Spending every day at the same desk surrounded by the same objects can become monotonous.

If your work allows it, occasionally move somewhere else. Work from another room, spend an afternoon at a co-working space or take your laptop to a quiet coffee shop.

Even small changes can help. Try different lighting, tidy your desk or introduce some unobtrusive ambient sounds if silence makes it difficult to concentrate.

The objective isn’t to endlessly rearrange your workspace instead of working. It is to create an environment in which sustained concentration feels easier.

10. Take proper breaks

It sounds counterintuitive, but trying to work continuously can make long workdays feel even longer.

A proper break divides the day into manageable sections and gives you something closer to look forward to than home time. Get away from your screen, move your body, talk to other employees or go outside for a few minutes.

Avoid automatically spending every break scrolling through your mobile phone. There is nothing inherently wrong with checking it, but a genuine change in activity may do more to help you reset attention.

Taking short breaks can also help reduce stress and make it easier to return to demanding work with renewed concentration.

11. Look for meaning in your work

There is a bigger question worth asking if every day at work feels interminable: are you actually engaged by what you’re doing?

Meaningful work engagement gives you a reason to invest your attention in an activity. That doesn’t mean you need to believe every spreadsheet is your life’s calling. Meaning can come from solving a problem, helping a customer, supporting colleagues, learning something or contributing to a larger project.

Try connecting individual tasks to an outcome.

You may dislike preparing invoices, but those invoices keep a business operating. You may find proofreading tedious, but catching mistakes improves the final product. Seeing the purpose behind an activity can generate more positive emotions than viewing it simply as another hour that must be endured.

If you have absolutely no interest in your responsibilities, no autonomy and nothing challenging to do, however, productivity techniques can only accomplish so much.

Persistent boredom may be telling you something about the role itself.

12. Give yourself things to look forward to

Not everything that makes work easier has to happen during work. Plan something enjoyable for your free time. Meet a friend after work, cook something good, play sports, watch a movie or start a new hobby. Having distinct activities outside your job can make the working day feel like one component of your life rather than an endless cycle of work and recovery.

You can create smaller rewards during work too. Finish a demanding assignment and make a coffee. Complete a focused work block and go for a short walk.

You’re giving the day punctuation.

How to make time pass faster at work: stay engaged

If you want to make time pass faster, don’t spend the entire day trying to make time disappear.

The paradox is that thinking constantly about how to make time go faster keeps your attention fixed on time itself. The more frequently you wonder why the afternoon isn’t moving, the more slowly it can seem to move.

Instead, fill your day with specific goals. Use a to-do list, organize demanding projects into manageable periods, experiment with the pomodoro technique, protect periods of deep work and change your surroundings when monotony sets in.

Above all, find ways to become interested in what you are doing.

When your attention is occupied by challenging, purposeful or engaging tasks, you have less mental space left for wondering why it is still only 2:17pm. You become immersed in the work, the hours stop demanding your attention and suddenly it’s nearly time to leave.

That is ultimately the simplest way to make the day go faster at work: forget about trying to control how quickly time passes and concentrate on what you can control instead—your attention, your schedule and the work immediately in front of you.