I look at this from a physics perspective. I generally have 3-4 hours a day where I am making something (as I take on more leadership it goes down to 2-3 hours

I look at this from a physics perspective. I generally have 3-4 hours a day where I am making something (as I take on more leadership it goes down to 2-3 hours a day). During this time I am doing 'real work', i.e. applying force to our goal posts to move them toward delivery. Simply said, work is force over time and force = mass * acceleration. If I look at that as development force = knowledge x development effort, then my 'real work' is increasing my development effort. However, the time I spend refreshing, increasing my skills and my general knowledge, is increasing my knowledge, aka mass. Therefore it still increases the amount of work I can do. I can do more with 4 hours of work than many junior devs I know can do with a week. Not because I'm special, but just because I've done it before and now the technologies.