Personally I find that improvement follows the conscious/subconscious competence cycle.

I’ll be exploring a new concept — maybe a new opening, integrating a new middle game concept, learning about a new pawn structure — and my rating will drop a bit as I’m not as smooth in using it and it’s not well oiled. Then I get better at it, and it slowly beds in as something I don’t have to think about, and my rating goes up to more than it was before.

I’d recommend not playing to destruction, however. If you want to improve, I’d recommend having a look at a few videos of GMs playing and explaining concepts. It’s like science — you wouldn’t expect to reach an understanding of relativity using the scientific method from scratch in one lifetime; you attend a few lectures to get the grounding you need to then build on. Happy to recommend specific resources if you’d like.