I’m trying to decide when to use DeepSeek’s reasoning-focused mode instead of a faster, more direct response. For a straightforward lookup, the extra wait seems unnecessary; for a task with several constraints, it might be worthwhile, but I don’t have a good way to judge the cutoff.

How do you decide whether a prompt actually benefits from DeepSeek reasoning mode? If you use both modes, are there particular tasks where you’ve noticed a meaningful difference in quality or just a difference in response time?