Hi Tony
You speak right out of my heart. In my opinion to write faster code is not only a question of skills but also a mindset. To write tuned code is something people should internalize.
The best tuning is proactive and done by the architecture and system design! Tuning when a system became slow is reactive and often ends up with hacks and a "hope the performance is enough, for now" solution.
Greets
Flo