If you really want to gain insight into what's happening when you pull the trigger, get yourself QuickLoad
It predicts the pressure and velocities generated by any load combination that the user can create from it's massive database of cartridges, powders and bullets.
There's a ton to learn and good results from QuickLoad require that the user is reasonably knowledgeable in both the input variables and the intricacies of the software but what it can tell you is amazing.
Burn rate charts, I've never even looked at one.
Still happily answering to the call-sign Peetza.
The problem, as you so eloquently put it, is choice.
He is no fool who gives what he can not keep to gain what he can not lose.
-Jim Eliott, paraphrasing Philip Henry.