Where to start. I don't know what might be your proficiency with the pen tool, but the more you practice and learn tips the easier and faster it gets., If you make your anchor points inside the area, like inside an arm rather than on the edge, and stay zoomed in as close as you can so you make fewer adjustments, you may not even need to use the refine edge or refine mask option. I hardly ever do when I use the pen tool. Always go back over your work and adjust the path where needed. This is less needed if you are zoomed in when you work. Of course, I've often gotten 6 anchor points into a selection before I realized I was going into the clothing by following an arm or something. So you also have to zoom out to the big picture now and again.
I almost never use the polygonal but combined with the free lasso it works well for some images especially if there are an abundance of hard, straight edges. You can use it like a jig saw to make curves.
As for using refine edge/mask, my favorite settings are smooth and shift edges. If I'm making a complicated extraction that I am planning to mask, I like smart radius. Used correctly the tool moved around the soft edges gets rid of bits of the background you don't want. Very handy. In these cases I also click the decontaminate colors. Once you make the mask you can always go back into refine mask and go over it again. Just be careful with radius, experiment and watch the results. Pick the best background/view mode in your choices so you have good contrast to see the effects.
But don't expect that every pen tool selection and every refine edges and manual brushing on a mask to refine even further is going to be fast. Some are slow and painstaking. But the results are worth it. My 3 p's of PS (and members are probably getting tired of me saying it) are patience, practice, and passion. Have fun, enjoy it, and you will get a lot less frustrated. Oh yeah, lean on us all you want. We learn from your questions as much as you do. Sometimes we have to go in a try something we haven't used much to come up with the effect someone wants. I don't use HDR Toning much, so it was a lot of fun to play with it. That ought to be a 4th p of PS, but the 3 Rs' of learning and all that. Maybe I'll switch out patience with play!