So I've been learning Chinese for a while, but I still struggle to balance between very clearly articulating each tone, and not focusing too much on them. I've found that when I'm very careful and pronounce each of them, people understand me, but I speak extremely slowly and they get impatient.

On the other hand, when I try to speak faster, my tones are harder to understand and people tend to misunderstand what I say.

Is there any good guide or trick or trick to stringing tones together efficiently? Like, I'm sure the tones don't sound the same in the isolated theoretical sense as they do when they're together in succession.