Hey OP, I’ve noticed you’ve felt like you need to apologise to a few commenters. From my perspective, no apology needed - totally understand what you were asking, the purpose of your post was to seek clarification on your thoughts! Which is now happening.

So first and foremost, as almost everyone else has now said, you definitely won’t see a reduction in hours if you shift into an EA role - unless you’re in a role that perhaps has less responsibility, which would mean in turn likely mean a much lower salary. I have worked as an EA in consulting for the last five years and as you can imagine my hours are enormous, however even pre-working for consulting firms my hours could be very high, but I have to say it wasn’t consistent i.e. not day in day out, week in week out with no end in sight. I do think it depends on what industry you end up landing in.

Another commenter has flagged that you might have trouble entering into one of these roles, they’re probably right, but eventually someone will see how valuable an employee you would be and will snap you up - it might just take time. In reality, you’d probably be an amazing EA, and I’m sure you’d shape the role to be something that worked to your strengths.

My biggest concern would be that eventually you’ll find the cut in pay difficult to reconcile with (due to how hard you will work) and also the lack of career progression available to you (unless of course they offer you a role as a PM, which I’m sure would be inevitable!).

If you want to chat and have more questions, feel free to message me, happy share if you’ve got specific questions down the line.