It think it mainly depends on the difficulty of the problem.
If you're working on a very difficult math problem - say, a novel proof - you're definitely going to lay out the tools and techniques, the various steps of the proof, before you sit down and start writing it out. But for homework problem #7 of 14, just start doing it - you'll figure it out.
Similarly, if you're writing a CRUD app in a stack you've used before, you can probably just start. But if you're writing something complicated that you haven't done before, you should probably visit the whiteboard before the IDE.
If you're working on a very difficult math problem - say, a novel proof - you're definitely going to lay out the tools and techniques, the various steps of the proof, before you sit down and start writing it out. But for homework problem #7 of 14, just start doing it - you'll figure it out.
Similarly, if you're writing a CRUD app in a stack you've used before, you can probably just start. But if you're writing something complicated that you haven't done before, you should probably visit the whiteboard before the IDE.