I'll sometimes fall into a trap. I'll be sitting at a table outside a convenience store, or at the park, or at the lobby of the gym, and I'll say, "Ah, I want to work, but I've really got to go somewhere better before I do."
So I get up, go to a cafe... but maybe on the way, I'm a little hungry, so I'll stop and get some food first. Of course, the restaurant isn't an exactly perfect place to work, so I eat somewhat quickly, and then get up and go to the cafe.
And then there's no power outlets in the cafe, so I go somewhere else, and now it's like an hour or two later after I decided to work.
You'll see extremely prolific people do one of two things. Either --
1. Set up ironclad routines that they don't deviate from, and that have almost no ambiguity. So they wake up, do the same routine, and work at their desk. The desk environment is good, and they just jam right away, every day.
2. Be able to work anywhere, just start and work.
There's a lot of appeal to #1, and by all means, move towards it. But if you're regularly traveling, experimenting, or juggling multiple duties, you'll wind up being in imperfect environments a lot.
And that's when it's good to say, "Ok, this isn't perfect, but how can I do some work?"
Scratch thoughts on a napkin if you have no other paper to write on, scope down and do something basic if you don't have a full suite of tools, or just jam for 30 minutes if that's all the battery power you have on your computer.
There's a time to set things up to get ready to flow state, but -- at least for me -- most of the time I'm doing that, I'm short-changing myself the opportunity to do some good work before "finding the perfect location."
Just doing some work, where you're at right now, even if imperfect or short, is a great thing. More than the actual production it gets, it trains flexibility and focus -- and feels awesome afterwards.