Running out of time is one of the most common ways to fail a JLPT section, and it is entirely preventable. The exam publishes its timings; the question counts are stable; the arithmetic takes five minutes.
Do it before the exam rather than discovering it during.
Work out your own budget
For your level, take each section’s allotted minutes and divide by the number of questions, then subtract about 15% as a safety margin for reading the instructions, transferring answers and re-checking.
Write the result at the top of your practice papers. Not as a rule to obey rigidly, but as a number you recognise when you have broken it.
Where the budget goes wrong
Vocabulary and grammar questions should be fast - well under a minute each. If you do not know a word, no amount of staring will produce it. Choose and move.
Short reading passages are where the budget is usually blown, because they feel answerable. They are, given twice the time you have.
Long passages frighten people into rushing, when they are often worth more marks per minute than the short ones - the questions are more predictable.
Information retrieval is the fastest section if you scan rather than read: scanning for answers.
The checkpoint method
Do not watch the clock continuously; it costs attention and raises your pulse. Use two or three fixed checkpoints instead - for example, at the end of the grammar questions and again halfway through reading.
At each checkpoint make one decision: continue at this pace, or speed up. That is all.
The same technique applied to JFT-Basic is set out in time management, where there is a single clock for all four sections and the risk is even higher.
The rule that saves the most marks
If you cannot answer within your budget, choose the best remaining option and move on.
There is no negative marking on the JLPT. A blank scores zero; a guess between two remaining options scores half the time. And the time you save goes to a question you can actually answer.
Never leave a blank. In the last minute, fill in everything unanswered without reading it.
Rehearse it, do not just read it
Timing is a habit, not knowledge. It is trained by sitting full sections against a clock, which almost nobody does enough of: how often to sit mock tests.
Sit one section, timed, this week. If you finish with time in hand, your budget is safe. If you do not, you now know the thing most candidates find out on the day.
Remember also that finishing is not sufficient: each section carries its own minimum, so a rushed listening section can fail you despite a strong total. Sectional minimums.