I think you're right, but I also think that there's very few examples out there of animations that I'd consider within the bounds of making acceptable trade-off

I think you're right, but I also think that there's very few examples out there of animations that I'd consider within the bounds of making acceptable trade-offs between the usefulness of their visual hinting and their effect on productivity. For one example, Apple designers are considered amongst the best in the world, but every animation on the iPhone could stand to be 10x faster. It's frustrating for me even just waiting for it to move from an app to the home screen after I hit the "home" button. Even though the animation is relatively short, there's a non-negligible effect on my workflow, and that adds up as I do it a thousand times a week and thousands of times a year. I'd personally rather see all animations disabled rather than what we have today (or even just an option available to us to do that).