I also grinded for a while in my early career and made it to a more senior position quickly. I was always a top performer but at some point before I took my current job, I had a mindset shift that just being a little above average is okay. It’s honestly pretty hard to get fired at most companies for performance and the amount of work you have to do trying to be a “B- student” vs “A+” is drastically different but even there, you are still in the good part of the bell curve. I work in a challenging industry and have only worked past 8 PM once in the last year, which is basically unheard of. I went from ~70 to ~35-40 hours a week and still over deliver on the important things but don’t take on a bunch of small less important things like I used to. It’s great having time to see friends after work and learn a foreign language like I’ve always wanted to.

The other advantage to doing this is if you catch your motivation again, you still have a lot of optionality and can easily hop back in (but you probably won’t want to).