Yeah, I agree.
For me it isn't a pot half/full empty thing it's more basic fact of life. No such thing as a free lunch.
I think of it this way. There is a reason you're arriving into LHR at 0900. That is you've missed that night in bed. Nothing in life is free as they say. All you've done is deferred what you should've been doing that night, on your trip, to doing into on your time off - sleeping.
So when you go arrive back home, you could power through. I find it just consists of dribbling in a corner feeling quite unwell and then passing out with your dinner on the floor ;-). So you go to sleep, wake up feeling drugged then sleep that night, normally like a corpse.
Keeping in mind 2 days later (1.5 if you travel night before) you're meant to have tried to recover what you lost on that last overnight, plus be rested to go back to starting in the morning. If you don't try to get it back you're travelling down the highway to burnout town pretty quickly :-)
Also, when I say useful day at home, day 3 of a trip can be quite a problematic half day at home depending how you handle it / partner's sympathy to Mr Dead, corpse like state etc.