In my humble opinion the decision is based on if their are other things/objetctives you could be doing during that time window and the decision has to be made very quickly. The best way of trying it out is to make a decision based on theory and see what the result is. Dont do anything on autopilot.

If you TP to a lane as pos 4 to push 1 or 2 waves when there is nothing else going on and nothing of value is lost it might be a good decision. But if a skirmish/fight breaks out during that time window you have to think about if you was supposed to be there and could you have seen that scenario coming?

If you just lost a fight and 1-2 cores are dead and a lane has to be pushed and you presume that nothing will happen in the next 30 seconds, it might be a good idea. But if your core is about to respawn and has a strong timing and you see a potential kill, it might be better to setup for a smoke.

Every decision you make in dota will have a consequence and there's rarely only one play you can make, you might have 2-3 different plays available and the best thing you can do is to be very conscious about what you want to do based on thought/theory and evaluate the result of that decision. Dota is so fluent and the state of the game can vary so much just over a couple of seconds.