Is This Why You're Losing At the Track?

Does your wife call you at the track? Do you call your friends to tell them where you are? Are you texting when you're watching the races and handicapping the program? If so, I doubt very much that you're winning.

Cell phones used to be banned at tracks, but now almost everyone has one and uses it almost constantly. Of course, it's no different no matter where you go nowadays. I have a cell phone, but I rarely use it and I never even bring it into the track with me.

If you're on your cell all the time when you're trying to win money, you might want to think about turning it off. This won't make it quiet at the track, because there are a lot of other distractions there, but at least your attention won't be focused on someone talking into your ear.

If you feel like you just can't turn your cell phone off, at least turn it to vibrate so that the ringer won't disturb other people as well as you. I find it very distracting when suddenly I hear the sound of some song or a TV theme at full volume when I'm trying to concentrate on my program or a race.

Maybe you could check to see who's calling and call them back later or just send a really short text message to let them know you're busy. Let's face it, if you want to stop losing, you have to get your priorities straight. At the track, your priority should be making money, not socializing.

You know, until recently, people managed to get through a whole day without talking to their friends except in person or on their land lines. I'm not saying we have to go back to that, but it wouldn't hurt to cut back on the number of hours we spend talking while we're doing other things.

If you want to ease into it, just turn off your phone while you're handicapping the program and then when the race goes off. Then, turn it back on. After a while, you might find that you can operate just fine with it off for most of the program. You might also find that you're doing much better at picking winnners at the track.