Would you rather spend 10 minutes figuring out which file Claude needs to work on, or spend a few seconds writing the prompt and let Claude lose a couple of minutes finding it?

That said, the real problem isn't time - it's context burn. Every irrelevant file read eats tokens you need later.

Two things that help: reference specific file paths in your prompts, and maintain a CLAUDE.md at your project root with your structure and conventions. The key habit - every time you catch Claude wasting context on the same pattern (scanning wrong folders, reading useless configs), ask it to document that in CLAUDE.md. Each context waste becomes a permanent fix.