> I don't think there has to or should be a long wait. Most infrastructure builds, CI/CD etc are bloated, unoptimized and take too long for no reason.

I completely agree with you on that. However, the wait time is usually not enough for me to really switch tasks for an other "productive" one, because when my pipeline is done, I would just need to switch back, and it really would make it painful.

The option I see about that however, is jotting down ideas for testing later. But then you need to get the time for this optimization, and the optimization will also require you to wait while you test if the result is better.

I know that there is not silver bullet, I'm just trying to make the situation better for me and others in the team

> Instead of thinking of that as the "problem" -- maybe it's an "opportunity".

This reminds me of that meme where the hero have an alcohol „opportunity” ^_^