In endurance sports, every athlete knows the sensation of lactate. When intensity rises above the aerobic threshold, the body produces lactate as a byproduct. In small doses, it’s not harmful, indeed it’s a signal that adaptation is taking place. But if it accumulates without recovery, it makes muscles heavy, slows you down, and blocks performance. Organizations face the same phenomenon: not in the muscles, but in the brain.
The modern workplace, made of knowledge and creative workers, runs on cognitive effort. When the load is excessive and constant, teams experience what can be called organizational lactate.
From Muscles to Minds: Understanding Organizational Lactate
Following the analogy with sport, organizational lactate can be considered as the byproduct of cognitive overload.
When not wisely and proactively managed, it builds up from every micro-effort that consumes mental energy, such as:
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Constant interruptions
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Multitasking across multiple projects
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Long hours without real breaks
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Pressure to stay always “on” and always “busy”
- Endless meetings
Each decision, each context switch, each small task consumes brain energy. And the brain, even though it represents only 2% of body mass, uses about 20% of the body’s energy.
Like in sport, one high intensity sprint doesn’t kill performance, a constant sequence of sprints causes exhaustion, disengagement; with no time for recovery, the system fills up with organizational lactate.
Many researches show this effect under different lens:
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Multitasking reduces productivity by up to 40%
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68% of employees report rarely having uninterrupted focus time during their day.
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44% reported physical fatigue, a 38% increase since 2019
These numbers confirm that most organizations are constantly working above threshold. Like athletes training every day at maximum intensity, teams accumulate cognitive lactate until their performance collapses.
More effort does not necessarily mean more results
Signs of Organizational Lactate
Just like athletes can feel lactate in their legs, leaders can detect cognitive lactate in their teams.
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Short-term: mental fatigue, rising error rates, lack of creativity
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Mid-term: motivation drops, declining engagement, more absenteeism
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Long-term: burnout, turnover, and organizations trapped in permanent Zone 5 — maximum intensity, zero sustainability
What leaders can do when spotting those signs?
Managing Organizational Lactate
Our suggestion to leaders is to take inspiration from sport training science.
Athletes know that performance comes from balancing intensity, recovery, and focus and not from pushing at maximum effort every day. The same principles apply to cognitive performance in organizations.
The first step is to protect what we call Zone 2 time (sustainable focus). Just as endurance athletes build their aerobic base with long, steady sessions, knowledge workers need uninterrupted blocks of deep work. These are the hours when the mind can fully engage with a complex problem without distractions, and where most of the real value is created.
Equally important are recovery rituals. In sport, recovery is where the body adapts and grows stronger; in business, it’s where the brain restores its capacity to think clearly. A “recovery ritual” is not checking emails while eating lunch, or joining a call with the camera off while pretending to rest. It means creating genuine pauses — stepping away from screens, moving, reflecting — so that the next effort can be sustainable.
Obviously there is also a place for intensity.
Athletes use Zone 4 intervals to push their limits in a controlled way, and organizations can do the same. Product launches, strategic deadlines, or transformation projects can serve as planned high-intensity sprints. The key is to frame them as intervals: they should have a clear beginning and end, followed by recovery. Otherwise, teams slip into Zone 5 — maximum intensity every day — a state that quickly leads to burnout.
Another way to lower cognitive lactate is to reduce multitasking. Each time the brain switches from one task to another, it burns additional energy and creates waste. Fewer concurrent projects, and more sequential focus, mean less cognitive friction and higher output.
Finally, leaders need to practice meeting hygiene. Just as an athlete counts every training session, its objective and the benefits achieved, a leader should track and evaluate meetings. Which ones truly add value? Which could be shorter, smaller, or eliminated altogether?
Every unnecessary meeting adds lactate to the system, while well-structured meetings act like purposeful training: intense, brief, and effective.
Managing organizational lactate is about rhythm
The leaders who will find the right balance between focus, recovery, intensity, simplicity, and clarity, will be the one able to unlock flow.
Reaching a State of Flow means continuous creation of tangible value.
Content: Human-Generated + AI Processing
