If possible, I think it would be best if you could have first-hand experience before making long-term decisions. This may not always be possible (and people can get hired in areas other than what they have been trained), but I would at least try to see what you can to in terms of assessing your ability to handle workloads in something new.

I'm not sure if this helps, but I have some experience where I thought it would have been helpful to have some extra time to prepare a paper related to an undergraduate thesis that I had. While I want to be careful about having too much emphasis, it also seems to me that maybe even completing the coursework for a Master of Science degree might be useful before publishing a paper (although I realize all Master's Theses aren't published). In other words, perhaps it could be useful to get your master's degree, work on a topic on a lab with that degree, and then decide about more substantial commitments?

If it helps, here is my thoughts on my first 1st author paper:

https://github.com/cwarden45/Coding-fRNA-Comment/blob/master/comment.pdf

(from https://github.com/cwarden45/Coding-fRNA-Comment and https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/comment?id=10.1371/annotation/c56e3273-feef-409d-aaed-9cc464e64739)