How to optimize my code in selenium webdriver?

I am trying to optimize the code below to log in to the system, using try ... except. My first problem is that try except takes too long, because always looking for a certain element on the page.

My questions are:
1) This can be done other than using the element?
2) There are different options to set the wait than the timeout (f.e .: wrongcred = WebDriverWait (self.driver, timeout = 1))?

Thanks for response.

    def test_role(self, u=None, p=None):
        if u is not None:
            print("Start test...")
            username = self.driver.find_element_by_id("username")
            username.clear()
            username.send_keys(u)
            password = self.driver.find_element_by_id("password")
            password.clear()
            self.driver.implicitly_wait(30)
            password.send_keys(p)
            self.driver.implicitly_wait(30)
            self.driver.find_element_by_id("kc-login").click()
            try:
                WebDriverWait(self.driver, timeout=1).until(EC.visibility_of_element_located((By.XPATH, "//h2[contains(text(),'workplace s')]")))
                print("Found")
                logout = self.driver.find_element_by_xpath("//mat-icon[@class='mat-icon notranslate material-icons mat-icon-no-color']")
                print("Odhlaseni z AISG")
                logout.click()
            except:
                print("Not found")
                try:
                    wrongcred = WebDriverWait(self.driver, timeout=1).until(EC.visibility_of_element_located((By.XPATH, "//span[@class='kc-feedback-text']")))
                    assert wrongcred.text == "Invalid username or password."
                    print("wrongcred")

                except:
                    print("change password to all123546")
                    username = self.driver.find_element_by_id("password-new")
                    username.clear()
                    username.send_keys("all123546")
                    password = self.driver.find_element_by_id("password-confirm")
                    password.clear()
                    password.send_keys("all123546")
                    self.driver.find_element_by_id("kc-form-buttons").click()
                    logout = self.driver.find_element_by_xpath(
                        "//mat-icon[@class='mat-icon notranslate material-icons mat-icon-no-color']")
                    print("Logout")
                    logout.click()

            print("Continue with next username")

        else:
            print("Tested with all users.")