Somewhere along the line, when working on any recording project, there are points where the "real work" needs to be done. Real work, to me, is the time where intense listening skills are brought into play – bolstered by all of your knowledge and taste. This is when you embark on an untold amount of small and giant decisions that need to be made in order for the music to be its best, as well as for the recording, editing, overdubbing, mixing, mastering, and any other task to be performed at a high level. This is everything we do to help support the art to the fullest.
But I've noticed, for some people, it's far easier to set a hard parameter to hit rather than to make a judgement call that allows for looseness, art, and feelings. By "hard parameter" I mean quantifiable elements of a recording. Such as how we can absolutely say a note might be in tune, but we can't necessarily determine if a guitar amp tone is "correct." More examples?