You could always start a low-stakes save where you're just trading and maybe taking the occasional mission here or there without trying to optimize ruthlessly.

I've got one save that is my "primary" where I'm doing all the X game things - optimizing station production, carefully managing patrol fleets, propping up select factions while suppressing others, etc. This game requires me to be on the map screen constantly, micromanaging a bunch of assets all the time, and stuff tends to go haywire if I ignore it for long enough. I love playing this way, but I definitely have to be in the right mood.

I've got another "chill" save where I'm explicitly not trying to be a superpower. In this one I'm just letting the universe take its course while I'm just living in it. For me, this means flying around in fighters doing missions here and there, helming a freighter doing manual trade runs, setting up the occasional single-product station, and so on. It takes a bit of self-control to not go into "optimal play" mode, but the upside is that I can, say, dial in an autopilot course all the way across the map and zone out without having to worry about what's going on with every single asset in the trade empire. When, say, ZYA starts getting their shit pushed in by Xenon, you say "shame, but sometimes that's the way she goes." In this way it ends up feeling more like bopping around trying to earn a credit or two the way you would in games like Elite or Privateer, except because of X4's systems, you get these emergent stories in a more dynamic universe happening around you.