In 2017 we published an article on (a) making NetLogo models execute faster, and (b) designing models for execution speed. Especially, it tells users how to find the places in their code where execution is slowed down and then fix them, sometimes reducing execution time by orders of magnitude. Most of the article is still relevant to current versions of NetLogo, so if your model seems slower than it should be, take a look.
The article is:
Railsback, S. F., D. Ayllón, U. Berger, V. Grimm, S. L. Lytinen, C. J. R. Sheppard, and J. C. Thiele. 2017. Improving execution speed of models implemented in NetLogo. Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation. 20 (1) 3 which is available at jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/20/1/3.html.
We keep updates to it here:
https://www.railsback-grimm-abm-book.com/jasss-models/