Some ambitions fail because recovery was treated like weakness.

Long projects fail from neglected recovery more often than from lack of drive. Treating rest as softness means running at a pace that cannot last, and the collapse arrives before the thing is finished, which retrospectively looks like a failure of ambition when it was a failure of pacing.

If you are committed to something that will take years, plan the rest into it now. It is not a concession to weakness; it is the only way the years happen.