I disagree with the suggestion that there’s no technique. It’s not just trying to blow the water off your hands, it’s also trying to evaporate it, and both of these things are improved by mechanical action, and can be affected by environmental conditions, so even the super high power dryers sometimes need your help with that. Just like using soap is significantly improved by mechanical action, you have to put the effort in to rub your hands all over each other and get good coverage when you’re doing it because the blowing air is not going to do enough on its own.

Water has a tendency to bead up under surface tension which reduces its surface area to the minimum it can and protects it from evaporation. High surface area is what allows increased heat transfer and evaporation, so you want to maximize it to get dry. Rubbing your hands together continuously and thoroughly pushes the water around, breaks up the beads and the surface tension. Don’t neglect the areas on the back of your hands, sides of your hands, between your fingers, those are all additional surface area that is wet and are places where water can bead up, and that will protect it from evaporation.

Another issue is the human perception of how “dry” feels. Temperature and moisture are inextricably linked in almost every sense but particularly in our sensation of “wet”. Evaporation on wet skin causes a very real cooling effect, which creates the lasting sensation of moisture even when there isn’t any left. Hot air dryers can help combat this but it’s actually quite difficult to avoid completely and it’s possible to get hands dried in cool air that won’t feel dry at all (until they eventually warm up later). On the other hand rubbing your hands together creates friction which does in fact heat your hands, but also creates a sense of dryness even if there is a little moisture remaining. It’s a complicated balance and the point is that our perception of whether our hands are dry isn’t totally reliable to begin with. It’s much different than using a cloth or towel which wicks most of the moisture away without immediately evaporating it and doesn’t create the same cooling effect on your skin.

Not rubbing your hands at all will take a silly amount of time for your hands to feel dry even under hot airflow, because it is just a slow process and because of the issues mentioned previously. But also keep in mind if you’re just rubbing the palms of your hands and flats of your fingers together that’s only like maybe 25% of your hands total surface area and you’re not even allowing the airflow to get in there, the combination of the two the evaporation of water will be similarly underwhelming. You have to really put some pressure down to flatten out all those little wrinkles of skin and you have to get a good rotation going with some wrap-around and between the fingers to get all the skin on your hands involved while also still exposing all the surfaces to the airflow at some point. As you forcefully spread the water into a thin film with high surface area more of it can evaporate quickly into the airflow before it can bead back up, as long as you keep doing this continuously you’ll keep exposing new spots of skin with super thin films of water left on them and it will evaporate much faster and after 10-30 seconds should give you almost completely dry feeling hands (that are probably actually dry). Give it a try. See how it works.