So I found this thread (viewtopic.php?f=40&t=52195) looked around and came up with an idea sorta...
What if there were in-game mini-games, like for fishing, building, etc... that require a long time to finish (for the sand clock to fill up) More than couple of minutes
For example: for fishing there would be a mini-game (like one those flash/browser fishing games where the hook goes deeper into the water and when fish swim by press space to quickly pull up or something like that) that if successful get more than one fish, get higher quality by couple percent or something like that, but without making it too OP so it would be just a mini-game to keep the game interactive rather than watching for the sand clock fill up.
Anyone else have better approach to this idea for related things in the game?