{
  "id": "dropping-balls.capacity",
  "term": "dropping balls",
  "sense": "capacity",
  "pos": "noun",
  "status": "review",
  "level": 19,
  "arena": "work_life",
  "domain": "everyday_language",
  "style": "folk",
  "definition": "A sign that a person's energy capacity has drifted near the wall where maintenance of existing tasks stops and failures begin.",
  "folk_gloss": "failing to handle tasks one is responsible for",
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "energy.capacity",
      "drift.aimless",
      "maintenance.upkeep",
      "wall.range-end"
    ],
    "interaction": "phrasal",
    "novel_properties": [
      "capacity_and_burnout"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [
    {
      "text": "The 2019 outage at Gatwick Airport's baggage system after staff shortages led to unchecked conveyor jams.",
      "domain": "engineering"
    },
    {
      "text": "Australia's myxomatosis program lost effectiveness as rabbit populations evolved resistance within five years.",
      "domain": "biology"
    },
    {
      "text": "Knight Capital's $440M loss in 2012 when outdated trading algorithms activated without monitoring.",
      "domain": "economics"
    }
  ],
  "relations": [],
  "used_by": [],
  "forms": [
    "drop the ball",
    "dropping balls"
  ],
  "closed": false,
  "provenance": {
    "author": "phrases:qwen/qwen3-235b-a22b-2507",
    "date": "2026-07-29",
    "confidence": 0.7,
    "sources": [
      "folk phrase — capacity and burnout"
    ]
  },
  "canonical": "https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-dropping-balls.capacity"
}