The Performance Coach Who Found Mindfulness on an Electric Motorcycle

Tim Boughton has spent his career helping some of the world's most high-performing people find calm in the middle of chaos - governments, Olympic athletes, veterans, business leaders - then he bought an electric motorcycle, and discovered it was doing the same thing. 

He was not, by his own admission, a motorcycle person. Motorcycles were noise. They dominated their environment. They were the opposite of everything he spent his professional life working towards.

Then he discovered Maeving. A British electric motorcycle that looks like a classic but sounds like nothing at all. For someone who teaches presence for a living, that turned out to mean everything.

This is his Maeving story.

You've spent your career helping elite performers manage pressure, uncertainty and stress. Where did that path begin and what experiences shaped it most?

I think it all started long before I realised it. Having been a young officer in the military and later working in the city, I was immersed in environments where pressure wasn't theoretical - it had real consequences.

What shaped me even more was probably what happened afterwards. Seeing extraordinary people performing at the highest level but really struggling when the mission ended. Whether they were in the forces, Olympic athletes, actors - they had all been operating at the peak of what they do. But when it ended, there was generally a period when they went into anxiety, depression or sometimes worse. That taught me that it's not about suppressing emotion. It's about understanding your own mind and your nervous system.

That curiosity led me to Oxford University, where I studied Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) and then Psychology. And I suppose it's all rooted in my own journey too - having PTSD and wanting to understand my own mind. Over fifteen years of doing that, I've been able to help others understand theirs.

Your work sits at the intersection of ancient wisdom and performance science. How do you explain that combination to someone who's never encountered it?

People often think mindfulness is purely a mystical thing, detached from real life. I see it very differently. The ancient traditions spent thousands of years observing the human mind. Modern neuroscience is purely about explaining why those observations were correct.

For me, it's less about sitting on a cushion and more about noticing what's happening inside yourself before it starts making decisions for you. Marcus Aurelius, the Stoic philosophers, the Buddha - all of them were saying the same thing in essence: take a pause. Because a pause allows everything else to catch up. You make rational decisions rather than reactive ones. We're after response rather than reaction.

You describe yourself as a former motorcycle sceptic. What was it about Maeving specifically that made you take a second look?

I could fly helicopters, but I thought I couldn't ride a motorbike. It wasn't for me. Then a close friend sent me an Instagram post and I looked and thought: this looks like something different. This looks like something achievable.

For me, motorcycles had always been about noise, but what really intrigued me about Maeving was the absence of noise. How can you have something that looks that good - that looks like a bike with enormous power - but instead of dominating the environment, it seems to become part of it? It completely reframed what riding could be. From noise and petrol to something elegant, quiet, peaceful, transformative.

The Maeving is a British bike, designed and built in Coventry. Does that mean anything to you?

As an aviator and military man, it's really fitting that it's built in Coventry. It's a city that gave us the Jaguar, Triumph motorcycles, Armstrong Whitworth aircraft. It's the birthplace of Sir Frank Whittle, the founder of the jet engine.

There's a quiet continuity there. British engineering at its best has always combined innovation and elegance. Maeving feels like the latest chapter in that story.

The RM1S was your first motorcycle. What was it like getting on it for the first time?

I dropped the bike during my CBT - not on the road section, on the training bit. Then I nearly went through a hedge because the instructor hadn't taught me about counter-steering. I stopped in a lay-by and he said: oh, it's intuitive. And I thought: it's not intuitive, because I nearly went through the hedge.

But when I got on the actual Maeving, I was surprised at how intuitive it then felt. There's no vibration, no gears, no engine noise demanding your attention. The bike was simply there, allowing me to focus on balance, the road, the surroundings, rather than having to operate the machine. It was unexpectedly calming.

Paint us a picture of that first morning ride. Where did you go, what did you notice and what stayed with you?

I go out into the Hampshire countryside early, when literally no one else is up. I go back to the footage I've seen of T.E. Lawrence riding through the countryside on his Brough Superior - the motorcycle he was riding when he died in 1935, which I have also sat on bizarrely. It had that whole atmosphere: a slight chill in the air, sunlight beginning to filter through, birdsong, no traffic. In a twenty-mile journey, not one car. And because the bike is quiet, you become aware of things you normally miss. The smell of cut grass, church bells going in a village even at that hour, the subtle changes in temperature as you speed up or slow down.

I came back thinking: that was a mindful experience. With the Maeving, it's almost as if you're on a magic carpet, gliding through the countryside. It allows you to focus on everything around you.

As someone who teaches presence and attention professionally, did you recognise what was happening in the moment?

I think because of the work I do, I recognised what was happening immediately. And that recognition brings its own joy - it makes you enjoy the experience even more. A lot of people are reactive in the moment and responsive only afterwards. I'm responsive from the outset, which also makes you a better rider I think as you think well ahead.

Flow is about where you place your attention. I was zoning into what I was doing, focusing attention completely on riding the bike, in the moment. I spend so much of my professional life teaching people how to become more present. The bike simply creates those conditions where that presence happens naturally. For that hour, there's nowhere else to be. No notifications, no meetings, no competing demands. It's just the road, the weather, the awareness.

How has your relationship with the bike evolved since that first ride?

It's become a deliberate pause between different parts of the day. If I've had a hard morning, I'll go out at lunchtime and come back refreshed for the afternoon. The bike has become one of those places where perspective returns naturally.

And I love the conversations it starts. Bikers are a different breed - they don't particularly want to talk to you when you pull up in a Range Rover. But rock up on a Maeving and suddenly those same people are all over you.

The best moment was at a Harley and Indian meet at a local cafe stop. I've taken the Blackout tank off the bike and put the blue one on, so it has a slightly Harley-ish and individual appearance. They all came over thinking it was something new from one of those brands. Then they realised what it was, and suddenly there were eighteen Harley riders asking me questions. As I was leaving, they asked if they could follow me down a country lane. So I ended up leading eighteen Harleys at 60 mph, and as I turned off, they were all on their horns. I just thought: yeah, this is what it's about.

If you were recommending the Maeving to someone in your world, what would you say to them?

Don't think of it as buying a motorcycle. Think of it as reclaiming an hour of your life.

Most high performers optimise their calendars, their diets, their sleep, their productivity. But very few optimise what I call ‘wonder.' Riding a Maeving gives you permission to slow down just enough to notice the world again. And ironically, that's when our best ideas arrive - in that moment of flow, in that moment of genuine space to think. Some of my greatest solutions to serious problems have come from being on the bike.

Sometimes the most productive thing you can do is to stop trying to be productive. And out of that will come some of the best ideas you've ever had.

QUICKFIRE ROUND

If you could ride anywhere in the world, where would you go?

Across the Sahara Desert or across the USA. 

Three words to describe Maeving.

Innovative. Daring. Reliable.

What's the best advice you've ever received? 

Be your own person. You can listen to other people's opinions, but only you know who you are, where you're going and what you've done. And don't judge yourself by your mistakes. Judge yourself by how you get up and move forward.

If Maeving made a film about one of your rides, what song plays over the credits?

Ride of the Valkyries by Wagner.

Apocalypse Now was formative for me, and the whole sense of freedom that Wagner was writing about is what Maeving is all about. It's slightly against the ethos of the bike being quiet, but if you had Ride of the Valkyries playing as you're riding through the countryside, that would be the ultimate moment.

What does ideal downtime look like for you?

Get on the bike. And surround yourself with good people who want to know you for you.