Pep's Two Rules

Champions League stage. Penalty shootout about to begin. Everything on the line.

Pep Guardiola pulls his players aside. His advice comes from Manel Estiarte, his water polo champion assistant. Two rules.

"Decide where you're going to kick immediately. Then don't change it."

That's it. No technique adjustments. No goalkeeper analysis. No mental tricks.

Just commitment.

Here's what Pep understood: penalty misses don't come from bad technique. They come from last-second reconsiderations. The goalkeeper moves. You doubt. You adjust. You miss.

The change of mind is the failure mode.

Pre-commitment eliminates it. Once you've decided, your only job is execution. No more decisions. No more cognitive load. The doubt has nowhere to land.

This is why "being flexible" under pressure is often the wrong advice. Flexibility requires processing. Processing takes time. Time you don't have when the stakes are highest.

The optimization happens before the moment, not during it.

This applies to every high-pressure decision. Interviews. Presentations. Tough conversations. The people who perform don't improvise under pressure. They pre-commit, then execute.

Real-time optimization is a trap. Pre-commitment is the escape.

This is Dynamic 3 in disguise: feedback loops work when there's time to process. Under pressure, eliminate the loop entirely. The Momentum Engine shows when speed beats deliberation.