What I do other than flying out of plane when needed is untarget the deep space USS to change the supercruise physics and brake much faster than if you had it selected and then tap 50% throttle until I'm as close as possible (ideally less than 1Ls) before targeting it and speeding up to do a SCA fast drop if there's time to even accelerate that much. I think that's as much inputs as you can give it.Once you get away from the main gravity wells the travel times are very short, a minute or two (unless you have to cross the whole system, in which case it's a few minutes more), if you do it manually and aim for the barely-5-seconds ETA. I don't find it tedious or uneventful, but much like driving in racing games—trying to get to the "finish line" against the clock as fast as possible. Takes a bit of skill of setting your throttle just right, keeping the ship on target and finding the optimal path away from the gravity wells that is not too long. Quite zen, if you ask me. Only way to make it better would be diversifying FSD-s and ships to have varying supercruise speeds and accelerations.
I love driving endurance races in games like Test Drive Unlimited (or the old TD2) or The Crew (RIP) and others (haven't gone back to Euro Truck 2 though), but there's much more going on there in terms of inputs and stimuli during the drive. There's not much a hardish-sci-fi immersive space game can do to make flying through space more interesting. A good idea would be to try to minimize the supercruise time and maximize the amount of time you spend in normal space, actually doing stuff. Elite goes the opposite way with USS and has many USS that have maybe 1 mechanical scrap in them and could be fully looted completed before your FSD finishes recharging.