For ten or less components, 20 minutes seems reasonable (eg. 555 oscillator) if you have an idea of the general layout ahead of time. But then I've had practice.
I'm a huge fan of bare proto-board vs strip-board or etched PCB (for prototyping).
PROS:spontaneous design/build, no waiting,
minimal use of solder; less globs, cleaner (vs strip-board),
no cutting strips; making sure there's no connection between,
can be "multi-layer" or dense connectivity,
can modify design without restarting from scratch,
mechanically sturdy, reliable (vs bread-board),
can be disassembled into parts for reuse.
CONS:tedious to join every connection but can get faster over time,
worthwhile for just one-ofs, not viable for multiple copies,
no ground plane.
See my handiwork
here and
here. Or
this very clean looking SBC (not mine).