Indeed.
One bad use of plugins that I see a lot is having a meter-like plugin in the middle of the chain, that could be split instead.
Imagine:
plugin1 -> plugin2 -> meter -> plugin3
meter has to wait for plugin2, and plugin3 needs to wait for the meter plugin.
instead we could simply do:
plugin1 -> plugin2 |-> plugin3 -> more plugins
|-> meter
this way we can have a meter in the pedalboard without it causing less time for the important plugins.
something to keep in mind.