"You cannot afford to wait for perfect conditions. Goal setting is often a matter of balancing timing against available resources. Opportunities are easily lost while waiting for perfect conditions"
About this Quote
The engine of the quote is its pragmatic demystification of goal-setting. Blair strips away the fantasy that success arrives when the universe finally cooperates. Instead, he reduces progress to a managerial problem: balancing timing against resources. That’s the subtext: your life is a project with constraints, and your job isn’t to eliminate them, it’s to move anyway. The rhetoric also nudges responsibility back onto the reader. If opportunities are “easily lost,” then the tragedy isn’t bad luck; it’s passivity dressed up as standards.
Contextually, this sits squarely in the productivity-and-performance lineage of self-help writing: a corrective to perfectionism, analysis paralysis, and the culture of optimization. Blair’s stance assumes a world that rewards momentum over readiness, where windows close quickly and competence is built in motion. It’s less about romantic seizing-the-day heroics than about refusing to let “not yet” become a permanent lifestyle.
Quote Details
| Topic | Goal Setting |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Blair, Gary Ryan. (2026, January 17). You cannot afford to wait for perfect conditions. Goal setting is often a matter of balancing timing against available resources. Opportunities are easily lost while waiting for perfect conditions. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/you-cannot-afford-to-wait-for-perfect-conditions-60091/
Chicago Style
Blair, Gary Ryan. "You cannot afford to wait for perfect conditions. Goal setting is often a matter of balancing timing against available resources. Opportunities are easily lost while waiting for perfect conditions." FixQuotes. January 17, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/you-cannot-afford-to-wait-for-perfect-conditions-60091/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"You cannot afford to wait for perfect conditions. Goal setting is often a matter of balancing timing against available resources. Opportunities are easily lost while waiting for perfect conditions." FixQuotes, 17 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/you-cannot-afford-to-wait-for-perfect-conditions-60091/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.













