I guess I’m not seeing what you’re seeing. I don’t often switch desktops - I tend to keep a project on a desktop, and there’s enough real-estate for everything I need for that project right there - and I don’t work on more than one project at a time.
Window switching is instantaneous though, and I do that a lot
As you said, it's the set up. I'm almost exclusively using a single monitor, which works well when there's zero cost to switching desktops.
For your use case, imagine if the Window switcher, instead of being instantaneous, was a ~1200ms animation which blocked all key presses during the animation.
Mm. On the Studio, my desktop switching is pretty quick - 17 frames from tapping the ctrl/arrow. I have an M4 Max which is actually 1 frame faster at 16 frames (though measurement-error probably accounts for that).
In either case that's less than 1/3 of a second. It's nowhere near what you're seeing. I'd be tempted to take the machine to an Apple Store and say "this is broken, please fix it".
What frame rate are you using on those monitors? I ask because this is faster at lower frame rates. This is surprising and I very much want what you have.
Are you using software like Rectangle, Better Touch Tool, etc?
Window switching is instantaneous though, and I do that a lot