Focus @ 170mph

Friends,

There's a unique clarity that comes from being inches away from disaster at 170mph.

Last weekend in Belgium, strapped into the passenger seat of a Porsche 992.1 GT3 thundering around the legendary Spa-Francorchamps circuit, I experienced something that made me completely forget about AI, software, & all the tech that usually fills my mind.

What replaced it was a profound lesson about focus and mastery one that I can't stop thinking about as I return to my notification-filled world.

It all started with one of those drunken conversations you never expect to materialise. Two and a half years ago, during the 2022 World Cup, my family met a couple in Malaga. As the drinks flowed, we discovered the husband loved to track his German horses.

"You should come to Spa with me, and I'll take you in the cars," he offered casually.

We've all been there those alcohol-fuelled promises that typically evaporate by morning. But surprisingly, when the time for Spa came around the next year, the invitation actually materialised.

He’s one of a handful of people in my life who has promised the world and delivered.

You very rarely find people like him.

The experience was so awesome we expedited the purchase of our own Porsche to join the next event.

Life has its cruel twists though.

Our friend passed away in a cycling accident last year, denying us the chance to park our cars side by side, a small but meaningful gesture we'd looked forward to.

The silver lining?

His racing community embraced us as family, continuing what he started.

What fueled me most about this weekend wasn't the friendships or even the cars themselves it was the sheer, obsessive precision of the drivers.

I spent the entire weekend on the exhilarating edge of safety, and I was absolutely hooked. There's something hypnotising about watching masters at work from inside the cockpit, where nothing exists outside keeping that car between the lines at breathtaking speeds.

Bombing up Raidillon (a blind uphill corner that separates the amateurs from the pros), thundering down the straight, the drivers created a symphony from their engines, with their right foot.

Every movement calculated, every decision consequential.

• No notifications.

• No emails.

• No context switching.

Just pure, undivided attention to the task at hand.

This experience was a powerful reminder that while I've been deep in the technology trenches, specifically software and AI, human progress and mastery extend far beyond these domains.

The world is bigger than just software. Much bigger.

These racing drivers exhibit a kind of focus that's increasingly rare in our lives. When you're taking a corner at 150mph, there's no room for distraction. No multitasking. No quick check of Slack. Just you, the machine, and the track.

It made me wonder: When was the last time I approached anything with that level of singular focus?

There's an aura these drivers possess a calm intensity that comes from knowing exactly what they're doing and the consequences of the slightest mistake. It's mesmerising to witness.

And it stands in stark contrast to how most of us work today. the irony is that we've built incredible tools to make us more productive, yet we've simultaneously created an environment that makes deep focus nearly impossible.

What would change if we approached our work with the same focused precision as a Porsche driver taking on Raidillon?

Finding your own Raidillon isn't about racing cars or seeking physical danger. It's about identifying those moments in your work that demand complete presence—the challenges that require your full cognitive bandwidth and reward mastery with breakthrough results.

For me, I've realised that my Raidillon moments typically happen during the earliest stages of problem exploration. When I'm mapping out a complex system or trying to identify the core of a challenge, that's when I need the same kind of unbroken attention that racing drivers bring to their craft.

Last week, I was working on a how to strong together a podcast interview for Ventures For 4 hours I focused solely on understanding the problem space. It was uncomfortable at first my mind kept reaching for distractions. But I found that state of flow that racers seem to access so naturally.

What's fascinating is how universal this principle seems to be. Whether you're a surgeon, programmer, writer, or designer, the work that defines your contribution often comes during these periods of intense, singular focus.

Our struggle with focus isn't new, but the scale of distraction is unprecedented. Medieval monks complained about wandering thoughts during prayer. Renaissance artists battled the urge to abandon difficult works for easier commissions. Even assembly line workers in the industrial age had to maintain attention on repetitive tasks.

What's changed is the economics of our attention. Never before has so much capital been deployed specifically to capture and monetise the fragmentation of our focus. The average smartphone user checks their device 150 times daily each check representing a broken neural circuit, a lap interrupted.

Cal Newport calls this "attention capital theory"—the idea that your ability to focus is your most valuable economic asset in the knowledge economy. Like the drivers, those who can maintain deep concentration develop an almost unfair advantage.

This might explain why some of history's greatest breakthroughs have come from periods of enforced isolation.

• Newton developed calculus during the plague years when Cambridge University closed.

• Einstein developed his theory of general relativity during the focused years in the Swiss patent office.

• Darwin refined his theory of evolution during long, uninterrupted walks on his "thinking path" at Down House.

This precise, singular focus manifests across diverse domains:

In music, virtuoso performers describe a similar phenomenon. Yo-Yo Ma has talked about performances where he becomes so absorbed in the piece that his conscious awareness of technique completely disappears. The cello becomes an extension of his body rather than a separate instrument.

In software development, engineers speak of "the zone" a mental state where complex systems become temporarily comprehensible in their entirety. One developer described it as "the only time when I can hold an entire architecture in my head at once." Breaking this state costs not seconds, but hours, as the fragile mental model has to be reconstructed.

Even in finance a field seemingly defined by multitasking the most successful traders often describe moments of perfect clarity where market patterns suddenly become obvious. When I was on the floor of Barclays Investment Bank, a trader told me his best trades came not from frenetic activity but from periods of intense observation followed by decisive action.

As we tore up the Belgiun moterway on the way home , I found myself thinking about that peculiar clarity that comes at 150mph the way that proximity to consequence creates perfect attention. The irony wasn't lost on me: I had travelled to watch machines built for speed, only to learn a lesson about slowness about the value of being fully present with one thing instead of partially present with many.

The most precious luxury in our accelerating world isn't the ability to go faster but the freedom to go deeper to find our moments and approach it with the reverence it deserves.

The precision I witnessed on that track wasn't just about skill or technology. It was about respect. Respect for the machine, the track, the laws of physics, and ultimately for the craft itself.

The best drivers weren't the most daring; they were the most present.

Until next time,
Viraj