---
id: "quote-recovery-maintenance"
type: "quote"
source_timestamps: ["§ Protect your capacity."]
tags: ["health", "performance"]
related: ["contrarian-immersion-is-not-commitment", "action-protect-sleep"]
speaker: "Dina Denham Smith and Neri Karra Sillaman"
speakers: ["Dina Denham Smith", "Neri Karra Sillaman"]
quote: "Recovery is essential maintenance, not indulgence. Protect your sleep as you would a board meeting."
sources: ["tail2"]
sourceVaultSlug: "hbr-seg-tail2"
originDay: 2
articleStem: "hbr-tail-118-overcoming-self-doubt-launching"
sourceUrl: "https://hbr.org/2026/03/overcoming-self-doubt-when-launching-your-own-business"
sourceTitle: "Overcoming Self-Doubt When Launching Your Own Business"
---
# Recovery as Maintenance

> “Recovery is essential maintenance, not indulgence. Protect your sleep as you would a board meeting.”
> — [[entity-dina-denham-smith]] and [[entity-neri-karra-sillaman]]

**Significance:** Reframes physical and mental rest from a luxury or sign of weakness into a *non-negotiable operational requirement*. The vivid analogy — protect sleep like a board meeting — is the memorable hook for the *Protect your capacity* step. Directly drives the action [[action-protect-sleep]] and embodies the reframe [[contrarian-immersion-is-not-commitment]]; the mechanism it protects against is [[concept-cognitive-bandwidth-narrowing]].