Earlier quoted context omitted.
The kernel could start 100 processes in the time it takes me to type those extra four characters. We won't run out of processes. I did a test, finding .txt files in /usr/share, it took about .25 seconds longer with du and grep, which seems like less than it takes to type 4 more characters.
How long does it take you to type a character???
A word is standardized as 5 keystrokes
80 wpm is therefore 400 keystrokes per minute.
Divide by 60 to get about 6.6 keystrokes per second, or about 0.15 seconds per keystroke.
Therefore it would take about 0.6 seconds to type the four extra characters, giving a net savings to use du+grep instead.
And 80 wpm is probably a rather fast estimate; I'd guess that I type slower when I'm writing commands than when I'm entering English text.