I've had MHW since release, but only played about 10-15 hours. I work full-time and have a 1-year-old kid, so the time I have to play is very limited, and I can could be pulled away without warning at any moment.

I feel that it there's too much of a time committemnt to each quest, especially because I'm playing alone. Also, you can't pause the game.

Are there any fun/interesting quests/tasks that I can jump into that will not take upwards of 30 minutes to complete?

Going to join the echo, but most monsters should take no more than 20 minutes. Taking on weaker monsters can ensure that you keep that time on the low side. Then after that you'll have the gear to take on more difficult hunts to keep that time low also.

But a better advice would be to leave that switch where you tell yourself that "you must complete the task" off in your head. You could try and just play the game, and leave it at your convenience. Feel no obligation to this thing that is meant to be for your fun.

If you fail a quest because your kid needs you, then so be it. It is just game.

Edit: Something more concrete: If you do expeditions early on, which I imagine you are. You do get some missions for Pallico weapons.This fits into "cool activity" without any time pressure for the most part. Same as fishing missions and wild life capture missions. Those are mean to be relaxing. This will help you know the maps better also ( which in turn will make everything else go faster)

Another thing to consider is that, while it does take some time to finish a hunt, the 50 min limit plus the no pausing do make it so you can do one hunt and let it be all for the day. If you think about it that way it's easier to schedule, cause while it might seem like these harsh limits work against you, it clearly denotes your gaming time by design. Just another way of looking at it.

I'm not an MHW expert but in my 40 hours with the game most quests or at least those that push the progress and story forward + grinding hunts do take usually 20-30 minutes or more, sometimes that gets cut down by a few minutes with better gear. This is the main focus of the game, fairly long hunts, there's not much you can do to lower the amount of time it takes aside from getting better gear which creates a circle because that also requires these long hunts.

A lot of optional side quests like "gather mushrooms for Meowscular Chef" etc. are quite fast and take like 5-10 minutes or less, but I wouldn't call them interesting or fun.

I dunno how far in you are but once you get going most quests won't take more than 15 minutes at most. If you find yourself struggling you could try jumping into multiplayer. Even though the monsters gets tougher they will usually go down much faster than when you try to solo them, especially if you're inexperienced and spend most of your time trying to stay alive. I might be misremembering, but towards the end I'm pretty sure I was doing Elder Dragon runs in about 5 minutes or so.

Honestly, join people doing the quests/hunts you need or shoot up flares yourself. That's how you make hunts go faster. The increase in hp for a 4 player game is minimal compared to the extra damage. 2 players is usually longer because it scales hard at 2 players and then gently to 3 and 4.

You start to understand where monsters hang out, you get better and your gear gets better, but outside of some numbers on gear and player skill there is very little you can do alone to make things go fast. You eventually get there with experience but if you're unable to really play in the first place, just play online, turn mics off. I've never been on a headset with anyone other than friends and I completed hundreds of hunts in multi-player just fine. Very rarely did we fail except at the tail end of the game and also rare do you find someone near intentionally dying or off in the corner of the map doing jack.

As other have said normally the fight isn't going to take the full 50min. Are you with in the range of the controller when you are called away? Put it next to the baby or your desk hit it every few min :)

Hmm. Seems like it might be difficult. I'll probably give the multiplayer a go, as this seems like the best way to reduce the time on the main content.

I'll have a look at those palico and wildlife capture missions, too. To be honest, I'm looking for more 'chill experiences' in MHW. I really like the world and would like to play about in it without caving some dinosaurs head in for 30 minutes.