diff --git a/etl/helpers.py b/etl/helpers.py
index 74af9bff9b8..946a884f097 100644
--- a/etl/helpers.py
+++ b/etl/helpers.py
@@ -8,6 +8,7 @@
 import tempfile
 from collections.abc import Generator
 from contextlib import contextmanager
+from functools import cache
 from pathlib import Path
 from typing import Any, Dict, Iterable, Iterator, List, Literal, Optional, Union, cast
 from urllib.parse import urljoin
@@ -377,6 +378,10 @@ class WrongStepName(ExceptionFromDocstring):
     """Wrong step name. If this step was in the dag, it should be corrected."""
 
 
+# loading DAG can take up to 1 second, so cache it
+load_dag_cached = cache(load_dag)
+
+
 class PathFinder:
     """Helper object with naming conventions. It uses your module path (__file__) and
     extracts from it commonly used attributes like channel / namespace / version / short_name or
@@ -414,9 +419,9 @@ def dag(self):
         """Lazy loading of DAG."""
         if self._dag is None:
             if "/archive/" in str(self.f):
-                self._dag = load_dag(paths.DAG_ARCHIVE_FILE)
+                self._dag = load_dag_cached(paths.DAG_ARCHIVE_FILE)
             else:
-                self._dag = load_dag()
+                self._dag = load_dag_cached()
         return self._dag
 
     @property
diff --git a/etl/steps/__init__.py b/etl/steps/__init__.py
index c4416ea8d2a..711a36042f9 100644
--- a/etl/steps/__init__.py
+++ b/etl/steps/__init__.py
@@ -14,7 +14,6 @@
 from collections import defaultdict
 from concurrent.futures import ThreadPoolExecutor, as_completed
 from dataclasses import dataclass, field
-from functools import cache
 from glob import glob
 from importlib import import_module
 from pathlib import Path
@@ -131,7 +130,6 @@ def traverse(graph: Graph, nodes: Set[str]) -> Graph:
     return dict(reachable)
 
 
-@cache
 def load_dag(filename: Union[str, Path] = paths.DEFAULT_DAG_FILE) -> Dict[str, Any]:
     return _load_dag(filename, {})
 
@@ -517,8 +515,7 @@ def _output_dataset(self) -> catalog.Dataset:
         return catalog.Dataset(self._dest_dir.as_posix())
 
     def checksum_output(self) -> str:
-        # output checksum is checksum of all ingredients
-        return self.checksum_input()
+        return self._output_dataset.checksum()
 
     def _step_files(self) -> List[str]:
         "Return a list of code files defining this step."
@@ -714,7 +711,12 @@ def has_existing_data(self) -> bool:
         return True
 
     def checksum_output(self) -> str:
-        return Snapshot(self.path).m.outs[0]["md5"]
+        # NOTE: we could use the checksum from `_dvc_path` to
+        # speed this up. Test the performance on
+        # time poetry run etl run garden --dry-run
+        # Make sure that the checksum below is the same as DVC checksum! It
+        # looks like it might be different for some reason
+        return files.checksum_file(self._dvc_path)
 
     @property
     def _dvc_path(self) -> str: