Unspecified slowness in Lightroom since v13.5.1 on iMac

I followed the tips on adobe to improve performace, and I work off an external hard drive.  The lag is still horrible.  Any tips? 

I have an iMac with M1 chip,  16BG, OS 14.6.1.  my external hardive is a WD with 4TB of space thats 50% full....