The bottom panel is the easiest way, but not the quickest ;-)
I'm working mainly on expanding my CC7; creating relatives for profiles already connected. In that context I check the connections frequently to see I'm on the right track, stopping at the right point.
But it also turns out that there are many emigrants in my circles six and seven. If I can find them in America on FamilySearch, and they're part of a tree there, I check to see if there's a relative a few steps away who has a profile in WikiTree and in that case I often build the connection. (I'm really improving my FamilySearch skills this way, learning to connect family fragments I find there).
When I do work on a connection like this, I keep the Connection-to-Me for the existing profile open in a tab of its own - it's usually about 26 or 27 steps. Then a little while after I have built the connection, I refresh the Connection-to-Me and take a childish pleasure in seeing it go down to nine steps :-)