Planning vs. Building, What's more Important?

Something I've always struggled to balance in my work is the how much planning should be done before jumping in and taking action.

It's like the quantity vs. quality argument, or the sniper vs. machine gun analogy.

On the one hand, we have the "If I had 3 hours to cut a tree, I would spend one hour sharpening my axe" (Abe Lincoln, I think) school and "There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root." (Henry David Thoreau).

Sometimes I feel like this is the right way to go, because many hours can be wasted on ineffective actions. I've also felt the pain of wasting a lot of effort on things that don't pay out and could have been done in a more qualitative way with better results, and that leads to a lot of regret.

On the other hand, we have the "Bias For Action" that is one of the principles that Amazon and Jeff Bezos are famous for. This basically means, just take action, and prepare and reflect periodically to keep those actions on target.

After a few years of thinking about this, I've been leaning a little toward the bias toward action philosophy, of course mixed with periodic reflection. Because you learn a lot more from the actions you're taking, and no amount of preparation can substitute for real experience.

I still think there needs to be a balance, but I think the action side needs to dominate.

What do you think?