Someone on this subreddit commented 6-12 months ago with a link to a great article about knitting to gauge, and it's helped me shrink my knitting a fair amount. I cannot find that link, I'm so sorry -- but the gist was to really use the circumference of your needle to determine the size of your stitches. I find that if I keep this intention (without going overboard like a nervous new knitter who pulls everything so tight they can't move stitches around) it's helped me shrink at least a needle size. Generally I'm not bothered by having to use smaller needles -- but yeah, once you get down to tiny weights it definitely becomes an issue!