Depending on what your goal is and your personal liking (among other factors), you may choose to manually turn off the diffuser after just a few minutes.
Sometimes people overwhelm a room with too much scent. It depends on each person.

Alternatively, you can set the diffuser to its “lowest volume” setting, which will release the least amount of diffused essential oil. Therefore, you can really get a “time lapse” like effect. There will always be a low-level amount of scent in the room for an extended period of time.