Is there a solution for the CLI being slow and timing out?

Yes, if the CLI is timing out:

• Prefix your commands with a higher timeout value (in seconds) for specific commands:

  PLATFORMSH_CLI_DEFAULT_TIMEOUT=60 platform project:list

• set the value globally:

  export PLATFORMSH_CLI_DEFAULT_TIMEOUT=60

  And then run your platform commands.

The timeout default value is set to 30 seconds.

However, a request taking more than 30 seconds more than three times should be investigated, if that's the case, open a support ticket.