With all due respect it's your own fault, not the game fault.
I am due no respect.
And it was the game's fault. All the planets I had were powerhouse planets. There had been an event (bug alert: no popup!) that seeded the galaxy with a bunch of class 25+ worlds. I captured as many as I could to avoid the AI getting them, and then I built them up as much as I could, because, well, that's the point of the game.
Ok, that's one particular game, but it was also the game's fault for making the wheel doubly difficult for what I was using it for because of the interface design and some of the game mechanics.
Two issues with the interface. First, if you mouse over an item in the build queue, it wouldn't tell you what the production cost was. Plus, the upgraded structure would disappear from the list of possible buildings, which was the one place mousing over it would show production cost. Even selecting the upgrading structure on the map doesn't show the cost. So if I was trying to get an improvement in 2 turns instead of 3 (or, put another way, 25 improvements in 50 turns instead of 75), then I'd need social production to be 50 instead of 34 & I had to guess or remember the cost of the structures.
That wouldn't have been so bad if, second, as I was moving the wheel, the various numbers in the interface behind the planetary govern dialog (maybe just replace the map?) actually updated as I was moving the wheel. But alas, no, you were required to adjust the wheel, close the dialog, see what the new numbers were, if they weren't to your liking, open the wheel, rinse & repeat.
That's the interface. But in terms of the game mechanics, say you build a ring of starbases around a world. You'd need to revisit it on every set of upgrades, because you don't see what the production will be when the starbases or its modules are in place. You see the planet's numbers this turn, without them in place, despite the game knowing what it will be next turn. Frustrating. So, your careful wheel management to not waste resources or to get improvements faster needs to be redone next turn when the starbases are done building and you have the new numbers.
And if you're deep in the tech tree, you might be adding .3 pop/turn. A world ringed with economic starbases with lots of enhancements is going to need further adjustment to avoid waste and to optimize things.
Anyway, all that could take 20-30 or more seconds, depending on how certain you were of the strategic role for a given planet.
Managing a bunch (around 10 i think) core important planets is one thing
30 seconds, 10 worlds = 5 minutes. Add to that improvement placement, to rush or not to rush?, starbase construction, trade, diplomacy, war, exploration, ship design... I mean, obviously there's a lot going on in the game, but a lot of it could be streamlined, and I think ditching the wheel - in the hope of getting more things like EmperorLeto mentions - I think is hard to argue is not a good step.