> My own experience, very subjective and it may be an edge case, is that
> enabling org-element-cache-persistent didn't make loading my org files
> faster; on the contrary, it made some things slower (including closing
> Emacs).

What happens if you set `org-persist--report-time' to t in your config
and examine *Messages* buffer after opening/closing some Org files?
Look for "org-persist:..." messages.

-- 
Ihor Radchenko // yantar92,
Org mode contributor,
Learn more about Org mode at <https://orgmode.org/>.
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