In this situation I try if possible to take advantage of early exits:

If this is inside a while or for loop use last as the final statement in any block preceeding an else and omit the else. If it is inside a sub and there are no statements following the topmost if, use return in place of last in a similar fashion.

If need be change the sense of the test to take advantage of this technique. For example, assuming a sub:

$o->check(...);

unless ($o->state) {
   action..
   return;
}

$o->check(...);
return if $o->state;

action....
$o->blah()
return unless $o->state;

actions..check..
return if $r->state;

and so on... at the same level
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