How to Make Time Go By Faster at Work, School and Anywhere
By the PomoTimer team. Last updated .
The quickest way to make time go by faster is to stop watching the clock, break the time you're waiting out into small chunks, and fill each chunk with something that fully absorbs your attention. Time drags when your mind has nothing to do except notice that time is passing. Give it a job, a mini goal or a game, and the minutes start slipping by on their own. Below are tricks for work, school, waiting rooms and long car rides with kids.
Why time seems to crawl
A clock ticks at the same speed whether you're bored or busy, but your sense of time doesn't. When you're bored, you pay attention to time itself: you check the clock, see that only four minutes have passed, and feel every one of them. When you're absorbed in something, you stop tracking time, and an hour can feel like twenty minutes. It's the old "a watched pot never boils" effect.
So every trick that actually works does one of three things: it takes your attention off the clock, it makes progress visible in small steps, or it gives your brain something interesting to chew on.
The chunking trick (works almost everywhere)
"Six more hours" feels endless. "Two more chunks until lunch" doesn't. Splitting long stretches into short, named pieces makes the finish line feel close, and each finished chunk gives you a small win.
| Situation | Chunk size | What to do in each chunk |
|---|---|---|
| 8-hour work shift | Blocks between breaks (about 2 hours) | One mini goal per block: "clear these 15 tickets," "restock aisle 4" |
| Slow afternoon at a desk | 30–45 minutes | One task per chunk, then a 2-minute stretch |
| School day | Class periods | Count periods left, not minutes |
| Long flight | Movie-length (about 2 hours) | Movie, meal, nap, book, repeat |
| Road trip with kids | 20–30 minutes | Rotate activities: snack, game, audiobook, quiet time |
| Waiting room | One activity at a time | A chapter, a puzzle, a podcast episode |
How to make time go faster at work
- Hide the clock. Turn your monitor's clock off or put a sticky note over it if you can. Checking every five minutes is the fastest way to make a shift drag.
- Turn tasks into a game. Time how long it takes to process one batch of orders or emails, then try to beat that number. Competing with yourself is surprisingly absorbing.
- Save a good task for the slow stretch. If 2:00–4:00 PM always drags, keep an interesting project for exactly that window instead of doing it first thing.
- Do the dreaded thing early. An unpleasant task waiting for you makes everything before it feel slower.
- Move. A walk to refill water, a stretch or taking the stairs breaks the afternoon into pieces and wakes you up.
- Add sound, if your job allows it. Music or a podcast works best for routine tasks; for anything that needs thinking, instrumental music tends to get in the way less.
- Talk to people. A few minutes of conversation with a coworker passes faster than almost anything else.
How to make time pass faster at school
You can't hide the classroom clock, but you can stop doing the math on it. Count down in periods ("three classes left") instead of minutes. Take notes by hand even when you don't strictly need to; writing keeps your mind in the lesson instead of drifting to the clock. Ask a question, and during a long study hall, give yourself one assignment to finish before the bell. It turns dead time into a race and gives you less homework tonight.
While you're waiting
Waiting rooms, DMV lines, airport gates and pickup lines are hard because you can't leave and don't know exactly how long it'll take. Bring something absorbing with a natural length: a book with short chapters, a crossword, a downloaded podcast episode, a handheld game. Avoid constantly refreshing the same apps; scrolling feels like it kills time but often leaves you more restless. If you're with someone, a quick game like 20 Questions or "would you rather" helps the minutes disappear.
Long car rides with kids
"Are we there yet?" usually means a child has no way to picture how much time is left. Two hours means nothing to a five-year-old. A few things help:
- Break the trip into legs with landmarks or stops: "after the next gas stop, we're halfway."
- Make time visible. A visual timer on a tablet or phone, set for one leg at a time (say, 30 minutes until the snack stop), lets kids see a colored disc shrink instead of asking every few minutes.
- Rotate activities on a schedule. 20 minutes of audiobook, 20 minutes of a car game, a snack, then quiet time. Kids handle waiting better when they know what comes next.
- Save a new activity — a sticker book, a new audiobook — for the slowest part of the trip.
Should you count down or count up?
Both can help, in different situations. Counting down works when the end is fixed and you want to see it getting closer, like the last hour of a shift or a car-ride leg. Counting up works for games and challenges, where you want to see how fast you can finish something. What doesn't help is a clock you keep glancing at with nothing to do in between. Start the timer, then look away until it rings.
How to use PomoTimer to make time go by faster
- For work chunks: set the countdown timer to 45 minutes, start it, and switch to another tab. When the alarm sounds, you've finished a chunk; take a short stretch and start the next one. The remaining time also shows in the browser tab title if you really need to peek.
- For beat-your-record games: use the stopwatch to time how long one round of a task takes, then try to beat it on the next round. Laps let you compare rounds.
- For kids and car rides: open the visual timer, pick a 20- or 30-minute preset (the dial goes up to 60 minutes), choose a bright disc color and hide the digits so kids just watch the color shrink.
- For a whole workday: the Pomodoro timer splits the day into 25-minute rounds with 5-minute breaks, so you're never more than 25 minutes from a break.
The timers run in your browser and keep accurate time in the background, but the alarm only plays while the page is open, and on phones the screen may lock depending on the browser.
Frequently asked questions
Why does time go faster when you're having fun?
Because you're not paying attention to it. When something holds your attention, you stop checking how much time has passed, so you don't notice the minutes going by. Looking back, though, a fun day packed with new experiences often feels longer in memory than a dull one.
Why does the last hour of the day feel the longest?
You're tired, you're focused on leaving, and you probably check the clock more often than at any other time. Plan a specific, slightly engaging task for that last hour so you have something besides the clock to look at.
Does sleeping make time go faster?
On a long flight or overnight bus, yes; a nap is one of the best ways to skip through a long wait. At work or school it obviously isn't an option, so stick to chunking and absorbing tasks there.