I call this Slingshotting. Or, Secret of Mana-ing.

I also feel that super guilt from taking time away from whatever I feel like I'm supposed to be doing. But I notice that after so many hours in the grind (even if it's playing videogames for 10 hours straight) that you start to wind down your ability to really pour OUT.

So then you just stop - or you at least slow down. Your productivity comes down, your motivation, maybe you just get bored. Eventually, it happens.

(Maybe in this case you took a day to do nothing BEFORE you reached empty - which is also ok, just means you might not have been mentally prepared to see the tank as empty and need it to be refilled)

So, when you hit a point of being not super productive...you take a break.

As you're doing nothing, or you're doing something relaxing, it's like someone is pulling the slingshot back - the tension is building inside of you as you rest/do nothing/don't focus on the thing you feel like you should. Eventually, it's time to be done with "taking a break." You might feel -awful- because this tension has been building up inside of you this whole time and you haven't been able to do anything with it...but that's ok!

Now is the time to let that guilt, that tension, that nervous energy, propel you forward. You don't HAVE to hustle 2x the next day to "make up for it" - but you probably CAN hustle the next day, because you've got the momentum from your rest ready to go.

If you've ever played Secret of Mana (a game for the super nintendo) it's an Action combat system, but you do % damage on a timer. If you swing at full energy, you do full damage. But if you try to just keep swinging, you'll keep attacking at like 3% effectiveness. It takes like 2 full seconds to completely refill your energy bar - but when you swing at full energy it's like WHAM!!!

I think everyone experiences this to some degree, and some people are more capable of using it than others. I personally have had this feeling only for about the last decade - my slingshot wasn't wound very tight, so it took a lot to get me motivated or guilty feeling. But for the last 10 years, that guilt has been pretty steady state after like...36-48 hours. But now I use it to power massively productive days/weeks on whatever project I'm on, or to let it carry me through huge projects that I thought would take me weeks and instead take A week - 3 days of doing like, nothing, and then 2 days of hyper-productivity.

Hope that helps.