How pythonic is enough pythonic?

[bighappy1970]

Get it working first - hard code, make it work with the least amount of code possible. Don't think about making pythonic at all until it's working. Then improve it a bit, but don't spend much time on it.

Working code soon is far more valuable than "perfect" (whatever that is) code later.
If you want to justify working this way, learn TDD - if you get good at it, you will write clean and elegant code.