Usually Obsidian renders only the parts of a note that are visible on screen. However, lists are rendered (and kept on the DOM) in their entirety in a single shot. Very long (unbroken) lists can therefore decrease the performance of Obsidian.
It would be nice if the rendering of long lists could be also be done progressively.
However, this is currently impossible and may prove very hard also in the future.
Current Workarounds
- Manually break up a long list into smaller ones
- Use smaller callouts