That is a really good idea about giving yourself time to recover your senses. Would you mind giving further detail on how you accomplish this?
One day I started thinking about my ancestry. My mother is clearly Aspie. Several of her traits are stronger than mine. From what I can recall of my grandparents, I suspect my grandpa was Aspie too. My grandmother certainly wasn't. My grandpa died 25 years ago so I only have memories to rely upon for information. My grandpa had a large garden and some chickens. He used to spend many hours of his spare time in that garden. Life was far more structured when he was younger, so he naturally had a lot of routine in his life. When my grandparents grew old they sold their home and moved into a unit in a village for aged people. He didn't cope so well there. My grandmother used to have the tv on a lot and she watched shows that have no appeal whatsoever for my grandpa, my mother or me. My grandpa started visiting my parents' home a lot during the day and he would sit quietly for hours with my father's chickens. It occurred to me then that he coped with sensory overload by spending time alone in his garden, and when I have sensory overload I don't actually need to sleep or even physically rest. I just need to cease all interaction with other people.
I have one diary that is for both work and private life. It's a paper diary so that I can easily view an entire week at a glance. I used to consider I was being efficient by scheduling multiple meetings on the same day. The intention was to allow myself a large block of time where i would seldom be interrupted so that I could concentrate on one of my projects. I've now realised that on a day where I have two or more meetings then I feel drained by the end of the day. So where I have a choice of meeting day/time, I space them out. That gives me blocks of time during the day where I am mainly uninterrupted. Some of my meetings are attended by a couple of very challenging personalities and interacting with them is very hard work. I take that into account when scheduling meetings too. I also have the flexibility of starting work around 10am. I find then that for the last 2 hours of the day I am uninterrupted and achieve a lot of work.
My employer has labs on multiple sites. On Fridays I used to visit other sites to monitor various aspects of the work and to provide training and advice to the staff at that site. Even though I really enjoy my site visits and the people in the other labs, Friday is an entire, intense day of people interaction. On Saturday I have no energy to catch up with friends on my day off because I'm still recovering from Friday. So i moved my site visits to Wednesday. I don't plan to do anything with friends on Wednesday evening, nor do I attend dog training classes on Wednesday evenings. Not only am I not in the mood to interact with other people, but I am tired and not in the best frame of mind for training my dogs. That isn't being fair to my dogs either. I have a quiet evening enjoying their company at home instead. On Thursdays I always have at least one meeting but it's an easy one. Once a month I have a more challenging meeting on Thursday afternoon, so I plan a quiet evening on that day. Friday is now a quiet day at work except for one day per month there is a meeting in the morning. The quiet time at work at the end of the week allows me to recover in time for socialising on the weekends.
I train my dogs and compete in trials. They take up one or two entire days on the weekends. If I enter the dogs in a trial, I keep Friday and Sunday evening free and I consider limiting my trialing to one day only, depending on the event and how much I will need to interact with other people. The amount of socialising I do depends on the nature of the event. If I'm seeing one friend at a time then I can meet a few of them throughout the day and evening. If I'm meeting with a large group of people and we're all taking our dogs for a walk, then that tires me more quickly and I won't fill up the day with social activities.
I haven't needed to keep a journal of my emotions or energy levels but some people may wish to do that and compare it to the appointments in their diary to help identify the most challenging activities in their week. I'm very fortunate in my job that I have a large amount of autonomy which provides some flexibility to help me meet my needs.
The part I struggle with is a close friend, who I have also come to realise is an Aspie. He is very negative when I need to spend time alone rather than spend time with him. I've pointed out to him that I think he has AS and we compare some of our traits, but he still doesn't seem to be making the connection that we have the same needs for recovery time and we find the same tasks challenging. He also grumbles that i don't talk to him enough but he won't acknowledge that he doesn't talk much either. My NT friends and another AS friend have all been extremely supportive.