Would this be an effective method to remove painted popcorn ceiling?
If the popcorn finish is fairly even throughout, and you can afford to lose just a bit of headroom, one method is to skim over it with thin wallboard (3/8 is generally available and 1/4 can be special ordered). This is put up in sheets and screwed to the underlying structure (which needs to be located with a stud finder or the poke-with-an-awl method).  Then taping, mudding (filling the joints), sanding the joints and painting.
Sounds like a big job, but usually less time consuming than taking down the popcorn surface.