Optimize why? So that we can spend the extra seconds on our social media apps? People need to learn to slow down and not try to save twenty seconds when boiling water.
Anecdotally, with two young children (5, 1), the savings add up and mean twenty more seconds with them or not being overwhelmed after they're asleep with the state of the house.
Boiling the kettle means I can make pasta and a sauce in about 12 minutes, boiling on the stove just adds tons of time. Given that the kettle is next to the stove it's simply self sabotaging not to use it, one button press.
Yeah huge difference if you have 240V mains. A 120V electric kettle is not much of a timesaver (though perhaps still worth something if it frees up a place on the cooktop that you need for something else).
Why should I optimize my code? To save 420ms for what?
I dunno. I try to optimize everything in life, maybe it's the engineer in me (I find it fun and interesting how people do things inefficiently). I also try and measure ingredients exactly (e.g. 420g of flour, not 419g or 421g), however that might be some low form of OCD. /shrug
Whether I use that extra time or not doesn't really matter for me.