MacOS Monterey 12.6 Issues

Since I have updated my MacBook Pro to Monterey 12.6 (updated on release day), I have been experiencing crashes in most of my productivity applications like Microsoft Word, Pages, Preview and the Finder application. The application would freeze and the rainbow ball would spin. Also, the force quit application menu would say that the application is "not responding".

I have never had this problem since purchasing my MacBook Pro roughly a year ago or on older Mac OS versions.

I would like to know if other users are also experiencing these problems and whether there is a fix to these issues?