The following is a mindset and strategy insight from high-stakes legend and Run It Once founder Phil Galfond. He recently shared with his email subscribers in a newsletter titled “Control Your Airspace.” In this breakdown, the G.O.A.T. tackles one of the biggest hidden leaks for poker players: the devastating cost of phone distractions and how to protect your mental EV.
The Illusion of “Just a Quick Check”
It is incredibly easy to justify phone use by measuring it purely in seconds. You tell yourself that checking a text takes 20 seconds, or scrolling Twitter takes five minutes. You calculate that losing an hour a day to your screen is an acceptable tax on your time.
Galfond destroys this logic by introducing the concept of Attention Residue.
When you are deep in the lab, studying a complex gto solver output or reviewing a brutal session in Hand2Note you will inevitably hit a wall of friction. The concepts stop clicking, and the work gets hard. In that exact moment of discomfort, your brain searches for an escape hatch, and your phone is right there.
You take a 60-second break to check a notification. But as Galfond points out, that break did not cost you 60 seconds. It cost you the momentum required to enter a true “flow state.” Every time you bypass the friction of hard work by looking at your screen, you return to the poker tables slightly less focused. You bounce between tasks, and depending on how your brain is wired, a single interruption can cost you anywhere from 5 to 20+ minutes of refocusing time.
The Dopamine Problem & Lost Motivation
The apps on your phone are not built to entertain you; they are engineered by top-tier data scientists to flood your brain with cheap, effortless dopamine.
For a poker grinder, this creates a catastrophic baseline shift. When you receive “bucketfuls” of free dopamine simply by swiping a screen, the hard-earned dopamine that comes from mastering a new strategy or pushing through a massive downswing begins to feel entirely unrewarding.
As Phil Galfond explains, the problem isn’t just that your phone breaks your focus. It actively destroys your motivation. The study sessions you planned suddenly feel like an impossible slog before you even open your database. The work itself hasn’t changed, but your brain’s threshold for stimulation has been artificially spiked, killing your work ethic in the process.
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Phil Galfond’s Exact Solution (The Action Plan)
Willpower is a finite resource. If your phone is sitting on your desk, you are burning mental energy actively trying not to look at it. Galfond’s solution is to structurally remove the choice altogether.
His personal routine is built on absolute airspace protection:
- The Morning Block: He automates his phone to switch to Airplane Mode before bed, preventing late-night scrolling.
- The 10:00 AM Rule: The automation does not turn Airplane Mode off until 10:00 AM, guaranteeing him hours of completely uninterrupted deep work before he ever sees a message.
- Zero Desktop Distractions: He keeps Discord, Telegram, and email closed while working to prevent the “death by a thousand pings.”
Galfond has zero patience for the usual excuses. Think you need to be reachable for an emergency? Set up bypass contacts that cut through Do Not Disturb. Need to listen to a podcast to fall asleep? Download it to an offline device. It is 2026, and as he bluntly states, there is no excuse that isn’t easily solvable.
The PLO365 Takeaway
Protect your airspace. The easiest, highest-ROI adjustment you can make to your winrate today has nothing to do with solver frequencies or board textures. It comes down to physically removing the distraction from your grinding environment.
Phil Galfond ends his email with a brutal truth that every grinder needs to hear: You can think about this concept for five minutes, spend ten minutes setting up a system to fix it, and save yourself a hundred hours of wasted focus this year. Or, you can tell yourself “I’ll do that eventually,” and continue bleeding time, energy, and EV.
Action is on you.
With over 12 years of Omaha Poker experience, Lebi is the Head of Content at PLO365. A dedicated PLO specialist, he bridges the gap between complex GTO theory and practical street poker. He leads our review team, stress-testing PLO solvers, HUDs, and training courses to ensure they meet the demands of the modern grinder. When he isn’t auditing poker room RNGs or writing strategy guides, you can find him grinding PLO cash games and Turbo MTTs. Check here how we review.
