I concur with the braid getting crushed. I had that problem with my 5 gallon set up and quickly went to the bazooka tube.... a nice option for under 20 bucks. A copper manifold works better with a square or rectangular MLT, but it it's a round cooler, the shape gets a little unwieldy, so I suggest a bazooka tube.. not to say it can't be done with a manifold. Either way, you need something more rigid.
Did you know that some mashes can be ready to run in as little as 15 minutes? The 1 hour mash is just a (mostly) safe guideline. If you look up how to use iodophor to do a starch conversion test, you might find that you can actually start your mashout or lauter in as little as 15-20 minutes. That can shave off 40-45 minutes right there!
Faster clean-up is the best thing you can do, IMO. Nobody likes cleaning up, so the faster and easier, the better. Don't bother getting obsessive with your clean up on the pre-boil side. While the MLT needs to be clean, it doesn't have to be insanely clean. It needs to dry out to prevent the promotion of mold/etc, but I don't obsess over it. Next week's strike water will have a couple dozen parts of a husk floating in it... no big deal. It's pre-boil, and it was dry so it wasn't breeding nasties. The boil kettle gets cleaned immediately because a dirty one requires scrubbing; it'll only get worse with time. For the fermenters, they get a 1-4 day Oxy-Clean soak (no scrubbing, no rinsing, just fill it and walk away). Then they get triple-rinsed and hit with StarSan on brew day, but the MLT gets hosed out, and not much more. As I said, it doesn't have to be sanitary, just make sure it dries completely and reasonably quickly.
Another option is a split-brewday. Working 12 hours shifts, I've been doing a lot of those lately. Mash one night (and collect runnings), boil the next. It doesn't speed up your brew day, but it breaks it down into chunks that are more manageable for some people.
As for cooling, I do it overnight. I've given up on CFC's and IC's in favor of the immersion bath. Fill the bathtub, stick the kettles in, and then go to bed. Voila! My cooling time is no longer a significant part of my brew day. The next morning, I rinse the funnel with starsan drained from the carboy, I dump in the wort, aerate it for a couple minutes, then add the airlock. The cooling and pitching step takes about 10 minutes, because the time I spend sleeping or doing other things doesn't count against it.