Two optimizations are possible:

• is_absolute() can pass the unnormalized path to os.path.isabs()
• absolute() on an empty path (or Path.cwd()) can avoid joining an empty string onto the working directory (thus avoiding a call to os.path.join()), and short-circuit the string normalization (as the result of getcwd() is fully normalized)

Linked PRs

• GH-103548: Improve performance of pathlib.Path.[is_]absolute() #103549