Why Is Your PM Tool So Slow? Here's How to Fix It
You finally found the right tool. The price is fair, it’s super fast, easy to navigate and does a great job at just what you need. But then you start noticing pages take forever to load. You click something and nothing happens. You open your main table and everything freezes.
It’s frustrating. Especially when you’re paying a good amount of money for a tool that’s supposed to make your work easier.
Slow performance is one of the most common complaints across every PM tool community out there. Open any ClickUp, Notion, or Asana forum and you’ll find one near the top.
Why does this happen?
The reality is that software has to serve millions of users with plenty of demands. That translates into adding features, running dozens of processes at the same time, and consuming a lot of RAM. Which can make things slower.
The moment you click something, your tool is running many processes at once. Every relationship between tasks, every automation firing in the background, every integration syncing data adds up.
But it doesn’t have to stay that way. Sometimes just a basic fix like checking your internet connection can save you. A couple of years ago I found out that I had an unstable internet connection that made some of the views on ClickUp not load. I talked with my internet provider and once they fixed the connectivity issue, my lists started loading just fine.
So here are some tips to increase the speed and remove the lag in your workspace.
Basic system checks
Do these first before anything else.
Meet the system requirements. Check that your device hits the minimum specs for your tool — ideally exceeds them a little. If you’re running below what’s recommended, performance issues are expected.
Keep your tool updated. Make sure you have the latest version installed and enable automatic updates. Running an outdated version is a fast track to slowness and bugs.
Turn on performance mode. If your desktop client has it, use it. In ClickUp, for example, this disables non-essential features like product guides and certain visuals to run leaner. You can find it under your profile avatar → Settings → Preferences.
Make sure you have a good internet connection. Some features are data-intensive, and as PM tools need to be always synced, you need a stable connection to make them work.
Use only what you need
Remove or disable anything that you aren’t actively using.
Reduce integrations. If you’re not using it regularly, disconnect it. Each one adds load.
Remove or hide custom fields you don’t use. They’re still there pulling weight even if you never look at them.
Limit automations. Even if they’re not actively being triggered, there can be processes that periodically check if these need to fire. Turn off automations you’re not using.
Clean up your dashboard. Remove widgets you don’t actively check. A leaner dashboard loads faster because there’s less data to fetch.
Use filtered views instead of loading everything. The more tasks your tool has to display at once, the slower it gets. Filter down to what you actually need to see.
Archive old tasks. Completed, canceled, or irrelevant tasks still take up space in your active workspace. Archiving keeps them accessible without slowing things down.
Disable animations and unnecessary features. In ClickUp you can turn off things like celebration animations or Flyout Toast messages in your settings.
If you’re using the browser version
Clear your browser data. Cache and cookies accumulate over time and slow down web apps. Set your browser to clear them automatically, and make sure the time range is set to “all time.”
Keep your browser updated. An outdated browser is another easy source of slowness.
Check if it’s your browser, not the tool. Disable unnecessary extensions, and don’t keep a hundred tabs open if you can help it. If your browser is the bottleneck and you want to keep using it, look into optimizing its performance. Or test whether the desktop client runs better for you.
Still not working?
If you’ve gone through all of this and performance is still bad, reach out to the tool’s support team. There might be an issue on their end that’s specific to your account or setup.
And if someone on your team is dealing with this, share this article with them.
