Outlook 2011 Slow in Mavericks

Question

About every minute or so when typing a new message in Outlook 2011, I get the spinning color wheel indicating a pause.
It's really frustrating and makes outlook almost unusable. It happens in all accounts. I ahve one echange, one imap, and one pop account.
Any help would be much appreciated.
Hardware Overview:
  Model Name:    MacBook Air
  Model Identifier:    MacBookAir3,2
  Processor Name:    Intel Core 2 Duo
  Processor Speed:    2.13 GHz
  Number of Processors:    1
  Total Number of Cores:    2
  L2 Cache:    6 MB
  Memory:    4 GB
  Bus Speed:    1.07 GHz
  Boot ROM Version:    MBA31.0061.B07
  SMC Version (system):    1.66f61
Macintosh HD:
  Available:    15.56 GB (15,564,636,160 bytes)
  Capacity:    250.14 GB (250,140,434,432 bytes)
  Mount Point:    /
  File System:    Journaled HFS+
  Writable:    Yes
  Ignore Ownership:    No
  BSD Name:    disk0s2
  Volume UUID:    6B2667F4-85F9-3B20-A14E-BBCE0C0BB2F8
  Physical Drive:
  Media Name:    APPLE SSD SM256C Media
  Medium Type:    SSD
  Protocol:    SATA
  Internal:    Yes
  Partition Map Type:    GPT (GUID Partition Table)
  S.M.A.R.T. Status:    Verified

Answer 1

*** ALTERNATIVE SOLUTION IF USING A PROXY ***
Hi all,
Similarly, I've been battling with Outlook for Mac related issues since Mavericks. Although this might not be relevant to all Outlook users, I'm posting this in case of others coming across this thread, and using this solution that has remedied my long standing problems.
Symptoms:
Issue connecting to Exchange server, continually trying to refresh email, emails took ages to construct - often letter by letter, unable to click into emails, etc.
Solution:
I was experiencing repeated Proxy login prompts. Details were saved in keychain, but still I needed to keep updating. Unbeknown to me, this was impacting the ability of Outlook to function normally. Although these prompts didn't originate from Outlook, they were impacting.
The solution is to ensure that you have working proxy settings saved in the system keychain, not just your personal login keychain.
So when you next get one of these dialogs:
Note the server name that is requesting authentication, the port (usually 8080) and if it is an http or https request. Typically it will be something in the form https://someproxyserver.someorganization.com:8080
See if you already have an entry for that server in your login keychain. If not, make one manually, (being sure to enter the whole thing as per the example above with the :8080 at the end). Typically that there needs to be two separate keychain entries per proxy server, one for http and a second for https, though syncdefaultsd only uses https.
Once you have login keychain entries for the proxy server, double-click them and ensure that under Access all applications are allowed, and that your user name is saved.
Now for the fun bit. Option-drag and drop these entries into your system keychain. Click on the system keychain, and confirm that they are there, and that all the settings are exactly right.
For good measure, do a shift-restart then a normal restart.
You should now get no more annoying dialogs for that particular proxy server. If your proxy server has more than one alias, or if you have several, then whenever you get a new unidentified dialog, repeat the above.
I hope this helps someone else in continuing to use Outlook.