Kavita decided to start her consulting practice in 2023. After the EMI situation stabilises. The EMI stabilised. Then it was after the annual bonus. The bonus arrived. Then it was after the kids’ school admissions were sorted. They were sorted. It is now 2026. The consulting practice exists as a Google Doc with four headings and no clients.
Kavita is not lazy. She is not unserious. She is running the most sophisticated delay programme available to an intelligent professional: strategic patience that is actually fear wearing a business case.
The “right time” illusion has three characteristics. First: the conditions are always external. Market conditions. Family conditions. Financial conditions. Things you can monitor but not control. This outsources the decision from “am I ready?” to “is the world ready?” and the world is never ready. Second: the timeline keeps extending. After Q2 becomes after the fiscal year becomes after the next appraisal cycle. Each extension is individually reasonable. The pattern is unreasonable. Third: the waiting feels productive. Researching, planning, refining the idea. These activities feel like progress toward the goal. They are often substitutes for the goal.
If the right time requires zero discomfort, it isn’t a time. It’s a fantasy. Every meaningful career move is made inside imperfect conditions by someone who decided that waiting was more expensive than acting.
Research from the University of Chicago on action bias shows that in ambiguous situations, taking action and adjusting produces better outcomes than waiting for clarity. Not because action is always right. Because action generates information that waiting cannot. You learn more about consulting in one month of having a client than in twelve months of refining a business plan without one.
The Indian professional’s version of this has a specific enabler: family consensus. The “right time” is often the moment when parents, spouse, in-laws and the financial advisor all agree that the move makes sense. That moment of universal consensus arrives approximately never because each stakeholder is optimising for a different variable and none of them are optimising for your growth.
Kavita’s Google Doc has been open for three years. The four headings haven’t changed. What has changed is that three people she went to business school with have started similar practices in the interim. They didn’t wait for the right time. They made the time approximately right and started.
What specific condition are you currently waiting for and what happens if you accept it may never arrive?
Kavita’s Google Doc has four headings and zero clients. Three years running. What’s on your Google Doc? careers.deliberx.com