CPU Usage is over 100% for any application I open

Whenever I open any application (browsers, VLC, MS Teams etc) the CPU usage goes over 100% for that specific process and the whole pc lags to a point where it's not usable. I'm on Ubuntu 20.04 and never had this problem before. Had this laptop for about a year and this issue occurred suddenly a few days ago while I was working.

I already tried the following:

• restricting how much CPU power a process can use with cpulimit
• Ubuntu 20.04 - Browsers are taking 100% of CPU
• prioritizing processes with nice
• increasing swappiness

I've been researching for days with no result. Any help will be much appreciated.

$ lscpu
Architecture:                    x86_64
CPU op-mode(s):                  32-bit, 64-bit
Byte Order:                      Little Endian
Address sizes:                   39 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
CPU(s):                          8
On-line CPU(s) list:             0-7
Thread(s) per core:              2
Core(s) per socket:              4
Socket(s):                       1
NUMA node(s):                    1
Vendor ID:                       GenuineIntel
CPU family:                      6
Model:                           142
Model name:                      Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-8665U CPU @ 1.90GHz
Stepping:                        12
CPU MHz:                         2100.000
CPU max MHz:                     4800.0000
CPU min MHz:                     400.0000
BogoMIPS:                        4199.88
Virtualization:                  VT-x
L1d cache:                       128 KiB
L1i cache:                       128 KiB
L2 cache:                        1 MiB
L3 cache:                        8 MiB
NUMA node0 CPU(s):               0-7
Vulnerability Itlb multihit:     KVM: Mitigation: VMX disabled
Vulnerability L1tf:              Not affected
Vulnerability Mds:               Not affected
Vulnerability Meltdown:          Not affected
Vulnerability Spec store bypass: Mitigation; Speculative Store Bypass disabled v
                                 ia prctl and seccomp
Vulnerability Spectre v1:        Mitigation; usercopy/swapgs barriers and __user
                                  pointer sanitization
Vulnerability Spectre v2:        Mitigation; Enhanced IBRS, IBPB conditional, RS
                                 B filling
Vulnerability Srbds:             Mitigation; TSX disabled
Vulnerability Tsx async abort:   Mitigation; TSX disabled
Flags:                           fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtr
                                 r pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx f
                                 xsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx pdpe1gb rd
                                 tscp lm constant_tsc art arch_perfmon pebs bts 
                                 rep_good nopl xtopology nonstop_tsc cpuid aperf
                                 mperf pni pclmulqdq dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx s
                                 mx est tm2 ssse3 sdbg fma cx16 xtpr pdcm pcid s
                                 se4_1 sse4_2 x2apic movbe popcnt tsc_deadline_t
                                 imer aes xsave avx f16c rdrand lahf_lm abm 3dno
                                 wprefetch cpuid_fault epb invpcid_single ssbd i
                                 brs ibpb stibp ibrs_enhanced tpr_shadow vnmi fl
                                 expriority ept vpid ept_ad fsgsbase tsc_adjust 
                                 bmi1 avx2 smep bmi2 erms invpcid mpx rdseed adx
                                  smap clflushopt intel_pt xsaveopt xsavec xgetb
                                 v1 xsaves dtherm ida arat pln pts hwp hwp_notif
                                 y hwp_act_window hwp_epp md_clear flush_l1d arc
                                 h_capabilities