I personally use Doom because there are a lot of out of the box optimizations, some don't like how hlissner has brought nix ideas of declarative package management into the mix, but I am a nix user so it makes sense. I also am an evil (heretic) user - Doom is configured from the get go as a gateway from vim/neovim into emacs, and it does that job very well.
I would say use both. You can run multiple emacs configurations, and you could have your vanilla config which you slowly build as well as Doom/spacemacs where you can see what is possible.
I do have a wandering eye for EXWM, it probably would require my skill with emacs to increase and an optimization of my config so as to defer heavy tasks etc. If you have any suggestions on how to get there, I am all ears! The more I use emacs, the more I want to make my entire computer emacs.
You likely don't need to optimize anything; Emacs has seen some pretty significant optimizations recently (native Emacs Lisp compilation, tree-sitter modes, better handling of long lines, etc.) so performance is rarely the issue.
However, you do need to avoid call-process (spawning blocking processes) as much as possible. Also, my experience with TRAMP has been pretty awful due to the fix for https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=12145 (literally: TRAMP blocks all of Emacs while waiting on a network connection).
Some people want to just "do work" and not build a toolchest over the years. I think if I find myself doing something once, I will probably be doing it again, therefore the environment can help me greatly with achieving that goal in far less time. There is a diminishing return for some tasks, but some things I have written in emacs save me minutes of time each time they are run daily.
This is the thing people forget about emacs - it is primarily a lisp environment, entirely programmable. Something one can make their very own. Nothing else comes quite as close, even if the keyboard ergonomics (at least for me) do help to sell it. You can change the workspace to better the workflow in real time, that's the biggest selling feature.
And this is why, even though it is a better OS environment my grandmother will never use it.
And because emacs is under socialized and under adopted the emacs user will still have to use notion or outlook or whatever corporate security requires.
I'm not going to argue that emacs if "for everyone" and there's plenty in my own life that I'm happy to accept defaults in. But that said, it's not that hard to glue emacs onto existing tools if needed. If you're in a situation where you can only send emails on a locked down email client you can still script the client through emacs and some glue code. On MacOS, Apple script does wonders and for Windows there's AutoHotKey. Linux obviously is infinitely malleable.
To be fair to corporate, Emacs has a pretty terrible security model.
There's no reason a program like Emacs couldn't exist which had something like capabilities baked in, but as it is, every package has access to anything it wants.
I would say use both. You can run multiple emacs configurations, and you could have your vanilla config which you slowly build as well as Doom/spacemacs where you can see what is possible.