I learned a lot during those years too, and in some ways had to learn those things no matter what role or opportunity I chose.

I received some advice to simply add 15 minute of additional "work" a week, and not any more until I could handle it to my baseline... and then be sure to add 15 minutes of "balance" a week as well. Where my work days would go long, I found I was able to tie in habits to go for a walk, eat, etc. This did let me stretch quite far for a longer time, and burn out was a much lower risk.

How efficiently or effectively I learned those lessons could be debatable, but putting in sheer hours on learning and learning to apply things has compounded in some areas very strongly.

At the same time it must be acknowledged that doing this in a way that is not balanced can naturally lead to under development in other areas and it's worth trying to stay mindful of.

Hard work isn't a bad thing, it's the gap of not learning, not improving, not reflecting. There's no shortcut to putting in the work or learning the learnings.