Outlook 2002

Need more info on how is your Outlook configured.
If it gets the mailbox from an ExchangeServer, you can look at factors like performance of your notebook & Server, how many clients does the server serve simultaneously without degrading, networking involved-like how many hops between the two etc etc.
If you get your mails directly from somewhere online, like downloading your hotmail mails etc, you can check net send & receive speeds.
In any case, if you use Personal folders to save your mails, and still face this problem, you might want to try "Detect & Repair" option under Help. If this too doesn't help, you can backup your mails and reinstall the sofware.

Let us have more info and we can try to resolve better.
Best of luck.