Make laptop faster with external hard drive?

I have an HP laptop that is now a good 2 years old. My laptop is quite slow when I want to use powerful programs like Adobe Photoshop After Effects ect. As far as starting is concerned, it is good for the circumstances.
I have read many times that you can make a laptop faster by installing SSD storage. Are there any other options without installing anything? Unfortunately I don't know if it will have the same effect if I use an external hard drive and store all my data on it and use the laptop memory only for my programs.

Maybe you have other tricks in stock. Another problem I still have, where I would have to get an external hard drive, that my memory is getting full, would certainly be a reason why my laptop for such programs is too slow or too weak.

In any case, for all the answers that help me to make my laptop fast and strong enough for such programs, I'm very grateful.

To the technical data of my laptop:

HP 15-bw0xx

AMD A9-9420 Radeon, 3.00 GHz

4.00 GB RAM

64-bit

223 GB of storage (c. 221 GB used

15.1 GB of storage (D. 13.3 GB used

A question I still remembers, which external hard drives can you recommend?

You have too little memory. You should already install 8 GB.

An external hard drive won't do you anything.

Buy an SSD and replace it with the existing HDD.

Nothing works without "installing".

An external hard drive connected via USB is usually slower than an internal hard drive. In addition, you only have 4GB free. So best a 500gb M.2 SSS and it works. RAM should also be upgraded