You don't have to mine coin one by one. You can choose to mine 5 or 10, or more.
Since you have to pay 1 nxt everytime you mine, it's best to choose a number big enough to mine like 1 or 2 time a day.
Example : if you choose to mine 1 by 1, and you get 1ELEMS/hour. You get 24 ELEMS at the end of the day but you payed 24 NXT
So you just have to change the seetings to make the minter mint 24 ELEMS. At the end of the day you get the same amount of ELEMS but you pay only one NXT