Working hard does not mean you get things done. Getting things done doesn’t necessarily require working hard.
I waste time and I find myself often inefficient, but people say I’ve achieved a lot. Whether I’ve achieved a lot or not is opinion, but if they’re right, it’s because I know my priorities. I allow myself inefficiency on relatively unimportant things. The important things I don’t slack on. The important things tend to be important, non-urgent things, so they don’t require working hard or last-minute.
I am confident I will never look back at any period of my life and ask what was it all for or feel the dread of wasting any part of my life.
In strategy terms, if you know your strategy and you’re doing it well, you can relax on the tactics. You have to do them, but you don’t have to burn yourself out on them.
If you are burning yourself out, your life is signaling you of a problem. If you work hard all the time and you aren’t getting big things done, you may not know your priorities well. Your priorities are your values, which are based in your emotions, which bring value and meaning to your life. If your emotional awareness is low, you risk not being able to find meaning in your life, just working for other people.
You can improve such situations. My clients work on things like this.