Attention

I was playing tennis today and started pretty well. Then, gradually, I became less good.

My coach stopped me and said, “Tati, your body language is telling me something. You’ve stopped moving.” He was right. I had stopped moving. Not completely, perhaps, but enough.

My feet were no longer doing what they needed to do. My body was no longer preparing for the next ball. I was not really in the point anymore.

And once he said it, I realised what had happened. My attention had gone everywhere except the ball.

I was organising the weekend, thinking about what I needed to do after tennis, feeling inspired and curious about attention, and mentally writing something about it. I was noticing some friends walking their dog behind the court.

None of these things were bad things to be thinking about. Some of them were useful. Some of them were creative. Some of them were simply human. But none of them were the ball.

The Default Mode Network Butting In

It made me think about the Default Mode Network, or DMN.

The DMN is the brain network involved in mind-wandering, daydreaming, autobiographical memory, future-planning, creativity and rumination. It is the part of the brain that helps us make meaning, reflect, imagine, rehearse, remember and connect ideas.

It is incredibly useful. In fact, I rather like my Default Mode Network. It gives me ideas. It helps me write. It connects things that might otherwise stay separate.

But it is not always the network you want in charge when a tennis ball is coming towards you.

In that moment on court, I needed my task-focused networks online. I needed my body to move, my eyes to track the ball, and my attention to stay with what was happening now.

Instead, my brain kept pulling me back into the internal world.

It was not that I was focusing on everything at once. It was more that my brain kept switching away from the task and back into thought: planning, remembering, noticing, wondering, composing.

And when that happens, the body often stops moving too.

Attention Is Not Infinite

When my attention was being pulled in so many directions, tennis started to feel like I was trying to respond to hundreds of balls at once: the weekend ball, the work ball, the idea ball, the people-walking-past ball, the “what do I need to do later?” ball, and the “this would make a good post” ball.

But tennis only needed me to attend to one ball, the one actually coming towards me.

That is often true off the court as well.

When the internal world gets loud, we can start responding to everything. Not effectively, but mentally. Every thought becomes a stimulus. Every possibility becomes a demand. Every unfinished thing asks for attention.

And because attention is finite, we become less effective. We stop moving. We feel overwhelmed. We procrastinate. We lose the thread of what we were actually doing.

ADHD and the Salience Switch

This can be an even greater challenge for ADHD brains.

The switch that helps us move between internal thought and task focus can be more glitchy. The Default Mode Network can butt in more readily, pulling attention away from the task at hand.

That does not mean the internal world is wrong or bad. Often it is full of creativity, insight and possibility.

The challenge is timing.

There is a time for wandering, imagining and connecting ideas. And there is a time for tracking the ball in front of you. The difficulty comes when the internal world takes over at the very moment the external task needs us.

What Helped

What helped me today was not thinking harder.

In fact, trying to think my way out of it would probably have made it worse. It would have added another ball.

What helped was breathing, getting present, and moving again. Movement gives the brain information. It is a physical cue. It says, “This is what matters now.”

Move your feet. Bend your knees. Watch the ball. Come back.

That shift matters. Movement can help us move out of rumination and back into the task-focused networks we need for action. It quietens the noise, not by arguing with it, but by redirecting attention through the body.

Coming Back to the Ball

I keep thinking about that phrase from my coach: “You’ve stopped moving.” It feels true in many contexts.

When we are overwhelmed, we often stop moving. Not always physically, but psychologically. We pause, freeze, ruminate, overthink, scroll, avoid, delay.

And sometimes the way back is not to solve the whole thing in our head. Sometimes the way back is to move.

Take the next small action. Return to the task. Find the one ball in front of you.

So, when all the tennis balls are coming at you, what helps you move the dial back towards focusing on just one ball, and how might you remind yourself to do that?