Forget the clock. Find your cadence. Move in harmony with your own time.

I was never obsessed with sport for the sake of it. I was obsessed with what it reveals, about the human body, the mind and, above all, time. The more I watched, the more I realized that sport doesn’t just measure speed. It measures how we perceive speed, and in that gap, I found a philosophy for life.

As a child, I fell in love with karate, not out of fear, but fascination with how the body could be trained to defy limits. Every controlled breath, every measured strike, taught precision. Karate was my first lesson in bending time, not with machines, but with muscle, rhythm and breath.

Later, in school, sport found me again by accident. My primary school friend Austin and I joined the football team just to pass the time. We weren’t the fastest (that title belonged to Batanai Madhana*, a boy whose speed seemed superhuman). But we played at our own pace and stumbled into something close to exceptional.

But it wasn’t until I encountered Formula 1, cricket and Barcelona that I saw time’s full spectrum, compressed, stretched and shared.

Formula 1: Where Time Bends Backward

Formula 1 isn’t just speed, it’s the alchemy of engineering and temporal precision. A one-second gap feels eternal; a 10-second lead might as well be a different dimension. Every component is designed to control time:

  • Aerodynamics reduce drag by microns.

  • Brake-by-wire systems react in fractions of milliseconds.

  • Pit crews change tires in under 2.5 seconds.

  • Telemetry streams 1,000 data points per second to engineers across the globe.

Then there’s the driver’s mind. Imagine hurtling at 300 km/h while calculating tire degradation, fuel load, and aerodynamic damage - then casually radioing, "Yeah, I'm nowhere in this race mate. Don't know what happened," as Lewis Hamilton once sighed mid-race. His engineer Riccardo Adami reply was just as telling: "Understood. Charles 6s ahead. Pace is good considering the damage."

At speeds where milliseconds decide championships, they're discussing gaps like philosophers debating time itself. The car might be wounded, the lap times imperfect, but the awareness remains absolute. That's not just racecraft, it's mastery wearing a firesuit. Behind the scenes, teams ship 50 tons of gear between continents weekly, cars are rebuilt overnight after crashes and some parts are 3D-printed trackside.

Formula 1 teaches us how the sharpest minds manipulate time’s illusion.

Cricket: The Long Game of Presence

Test cricket is the antithesis of Formula 1. If F1 is a sprint, cricket is a walk through eternity. Five days of apparent stillness hide a psychological chess match:

  • Bowlers adjust line and length ball by ball.

  • Batsmen memorize field placements like maps.

  • Captains shift strategy as sunlight fades and the pitch cracks.

Stillness is a weapon. Time is a character. Every ball is a negotiation with fate.

The technical layer runs deep:

  • Hawk-Eye and UltraEdge track millimeter-perfect movement.

  • Ball-tracking software reconstructs swing and bounce.

  • Pitch mapping adjusts bowling plans hourly.

Yet, cricket remains spiritual. It rewards patience, attention and long-form memory. Cricket’s lesson: Mastery isn’t just quick reflexes, it’s knowing when not to move at all.

Barcelona: The Poetry of Shared Time

The first time I watched Javier Saviola play for Barcelona, it wasn’t his footwork that stunned me, it was the intention behind it. Their game wasn’t about power, but perception: reading space, passing into memory, not feet.

Under Johan Cruyff and Pep Guardiola, Barcelona became a philosophy and La Masia trained thinkers, not just athletes:

  • Their DNA-based fitness analytics, mapping genetic potential to tailor training, optimize growth like a bespoke algorithm.

  • Players like Pedri and Gavi are molded for systemic harmony.

  • Neuroscience and genetics refine instinct into collective intelligence.

The result is football that feels alive, a canvas where every pass is a brushstroke. Barcelona’s greatest lesson is that time can be shared and collective rhythm creates something greater than the sum of parts.

What draws me to these sports isn’t the spectacle, it’s how they warp time. Society tells us time is linear, finite. Sport says otherwise: F1; time is data, control it. Cricket; time is patience, listen to it. Barcelona; time is movement, dance with it. Behind the glory lies empires of effort; engineers tuning cars like violins, coaches studying soil types for cricket pitches, clubs sequencing DNA to perfect player roles. Yet most miss this. We consume sports like fast food, obsessed with outcomes, blind to artistry.

Final Reflection

I don’t watch sports to escape life. I watch to understand it, to see how humans bend time, endure pressure and elevate instinct into mastery. Formula 1, cricket and Barcelona are more than games. They’re living proof that the spirit can be trained, time can be understood and greatness isn’t speed or strength, it’s alignment with rhythm.

Next time you feel rushed or stagnant, ask: Am I reacting like an F1 driver (chasing milliseconds), a cricketer (leaning into patience) or a Barca midfielder (trusting collective rhythm)? Forget the clock. Find your cadence. Move in harmony with your own time.