You Can’t Recover in One Go

The night of our wedding, my wife and I slept only around four hours. After everything was over, we cleaned up, said goodbye to the last guests, and then took a walk around the empty venue. It was nice to get some extra quiet time and reflect on what was truly a perfect day. It also meant we went to bed at 4 AM.

The next morning, we woke up early-ish because of our sleep rhythm but also because we had to pack, load the gifts into my parents’ car, and check out. In the afternoon, we took a train to Amsterdam with my wife’s family. It was 9 PM until we were all settled into our hotel. We took care of some admin stuff, relaxed a bit, then went to sleep.

The next day was yet another early start, so that night, we slept around seven hours. Much better than four but also not nearly enough to get back to an eight-hour average. The thing is: Even if we’d had all the time in the world, we wouldn’t have slept 12 hours. We’d have woken up relatively early regardless.

If you’ve ever racked up sleep debt during the week in order to progress on your studies, work extra hours, or finish a big project, you’ll likely have learned on the weekend: You can’t recover in one go. Healing doesn’t work like that.

It’s easy to overextend yourself to get something done. But your body is not a rubber band. It won’t snap back into its normal state as soon as you remove the tension. Recovery takes time. That’s why we must do it habitually. It only takes one bad move to tear your ACL. Healing it will take up to a year.

You can’t eat 15,000 calories in one meal and expect to feel satiated for an entire week. And you can’t sleep 24 hours straight to make up for a week of late nights. Recovery can neither be front-loaded nor accelerated. Know your boundaries before you hit them. Get a little bit of rest every day.