Try to browse the web. Try to listen to music with Plexamp. Ordinary boring stuff but I think it is looking all over Slovakia for my AirPods or something so it can take them away from whatever machine I really want to use them on.

The feeling is exactly like the way it was with Windows circa 2005 when you expected your machine to go bad like cheese in a few months.

Are you sure yours isn't broken? My daughter has an M4 and she does hefty biochem stuff on it. No beachballing or anything. Same with my M4 Pro.

Also airpods move instantly here. No issues.

Something is seriously wrong with your machine or one of the persistent apps you are running.

Backup, reset to factory. Try using it, if it’s fixed, try restoring. If it’s not fixed it’s defective in some way.

If it’s broken only after you restore, manually import your data and install apps one at a time making sure nothing breaks before installing the next.