How do you make the time spent in the kitchen bearable?

The most practical way to make the time spent in the kitchen bearable is to change not the work but what accompanies it. Setting aside a listening habit you enjoy for kitchen work only makes starting that work easier. This does not work to the same degree for everyone, and it does not produce a love of cooking; it only lowers the threshold for starting.

What are you trying to change?

Not liking the kitchen is not something that has to be changed. What can be changed is how that time passes. The same forty minutes stretch out in a silent kitchen and get shorter when there is something you are listening to; the work stays the same, the time you feel changes.

This distinction matters in practice because it keeps the goal realistic. If the aim is not to love cooking, the sense of failure that comes from trying to love it does not arise either. The goal is smaller: making it a little easier to walk into the kitchen today.

How do you choose what accompanies it?

By whether the work needs your attention. In work that needs attention, such as chopping or standing at the stove, a program you have to follow works against you; you keep having to rewind and the work drags on. For that kind of work, music or something you have already listened to accompanies it better.

In the waiting stretches the situation reverses. While the oven is running or a dish sits over a low flame, a program that needs following can be listened to comfortably. Two different moments of the same evening ask for two different kinds of company; making that distinction once keeps you from wondering "what should I put on" every time.

Why something set aside for the kitchen alone?

Setting aside something you enjoy for one job only creates a small reason to start that job. A program you listen to everywhere all the time does not carry that reason; an episode of a series or a podcast you continue only in the kitchen does. We cannot say this holds for everyone, and it would not be right to present it as a rule; trying it for a few weeks and seeing whether it works for you is the only way.

Keeping the boundary is part of this arrangement too. Once you start listening to the same program elsewhere during the day, the link weakens and the kitchen becomes a solitary job again. There is no need to keep the rule strict; it is enough that the thing goes on being associated with the kitchen.

The company itself is not one single thing either. For some it is a program, for some a phone call, and for some standing in the kitchen together with another person. What they have in common is that the time does not pass alone and in silence; finding which one works for you takes a few evenings, and you do not have to guess right at the start.

Shortening the time is a way too

Company is not always enough. If an evening calls for an hour and a half in the kitchen, that block feels heavy whatever you put on. In that case what has to change is not the company but the block itself: a dish with fewer steps, preparation done in advance, or splitting the work in two.

Saying the finishing time at the start helps as well. A preparation begun with "this will take half an hour" starts more easily than one with no set length. When the time is up, leaving the rest to the next day is a valid option too; work that has been left is shorter than work never started.

What can you do today?

This evening you can decide what you will listen to before you walk into the kitchen; making the decision inside usually comes to the same thing as not making it at all. Choosing one single program to continue only in the kitchen shows its difference from the second week on. You can also look at how sound works in your kitchen: noticing that this arrangement cannot be set up at all in a kitchen where you cannot hear anything is a detail worth knowing before you try.