hashcat working on by far more passwords than wordlist

[Think_alien]

ok so even if i give hashcat a wordlist with 6 lines it reports having 719,454 and takes about 1 min to finish now when i combine a list with lines in the millions with a rule file it becomes impossible i.e. over 2-10 years time left some of these with lines+rule and the rate as a factor should only take at most a couple of minutes and yet its reporting two years and a mass amount of combo's that should not even be there.

so bottom line how do i get hashcat to ONLY process what is in a wordlist, and if everyone thinks "it does that" its not because its impossible for a 6 line wordlist to take 1 min at over 10,000 c/s