Laughs, seeing time left during tasks (8)

'laughs' is the definition.
(chortle is a kind of laugh)

'time left during tasks' is the wordplay.
'time' becomes 't'.
'left' becomes 'l' (common abbreviation).
'during' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'tasks' becomes 'chores' ('chore' can be a synonym of 'task'**).
't'+'l'='tl'
'tl' going into 'chores' is 'CHORTLES'.

'seeing' acts as a link.