Everything happens much faster and you need set speeds for everything. It's not the high speed in cruise, that's easy, but entering the circuits at 140kts, trying to lose speed and get below gear/flap retraction speeds, getting the CS prop and manifold right is a lot of work when you haven't done it before. Before you know it you've looked far too little outside the cockpit and just busted your base turn by a mile and you're still too fast and too high. That kind of thing.
Once you get a hang of it, it's easy. Won't take long. Do tight circuits and all the stuff will happen quickly, which is good practice. Before the gear is up, it's already time to turn crosswind, reduce rpm and manifold and do all your other checks. And as soon as you've turned downwind/midfield it's time to configure again.
I now fly my own "high performance" (I say that as she prefers to be in the shop, mostly
) aircraft and it's dead simple once you get the hang of it. But it was only when I got her that I started to do properly planned descents. You have to - you can't arrive willy nilly like you can with a Cessna and just drop down like a brick. If I'm at 9000ft and plan to go to zero, then I plan on a cruise descent 35-40nm out, which roughly gives me 500ft/m descent. If I need to get to a circuit height, I reduce that from the altitude to lose. I never reduce the manifold (throttle), I just take the speed. Sometimes I even go below circuit height just before the airport so I can climb last feet to shed some speed and configure. Gear normally comes down on downwind as it helps me slow down, and from there on it's just like your regular Cessna. I even come over the threshold at roughly the same speed as a 172.