Big Sur

Howdy,

Please check what is using most of your memory with Activity Monitor.

/Applications/Utilities/Activity Monitor

View memory usage in Activity Monitor on Mac

To start with, you will probably want to View > All Processes, with Memory and maybe Real Memory selected to view.

Once you are viewing the Memory Columns you can click on the column headers to sort by that column. You want most on top.

If you have a lot of Swap Used, you are using a lot of Virtual Memory.

And from Check if your Mac needs more RAM in Activity Monitor

The Memory Pressure graph lets you know if your computer is using memory efficiently.

• Green memory pressure: Your computer is using all of its RAM efficiently.
• Yellow memory pressure: Your computer might eventually need more RAM.
• Red memory pressure: Your computer needs more RAM.

If memory pressure is yellow, red, or has spikes, check to see if an app is using up memory and causing the memory pressure to increase. If you no longer need to have the app running, you should quit the app.

Your computer’s memory pressure is accurately measured by examining the amount of free memory available, the swap rate, and the amount of wired and file cached memory to determine if your computer is using RAM efficiently.

If you can add memory to your MacBook Pro then check it out,

else quit Apps that you don't need running, or try to lessen an App's memory usage: close browser tabs, close unused files and windows etc.

ivan