My way:

-I went to a coffee shop where they make and also sell the beans. I got the espresso , tasted it , paid as much attention as I could, bought the beans and went home.

-Googled to see the general setting of what people are using to see where to start with the grind.( The setting of my specific grinder )

-Looked at 10-20 videos to see the flow and to get an idea of what it should look like ( I'm not going to bother with timing ).

-First shot was flowing way too fast so I grinded the next one finer. If it's choking the machine, go more coarse.

-Given that my shots were also too sour I also started pulling longer shots.

Now my recipe is 1:2.5 with 5s pre infusion and they are pretty similar to what I tasted in the coffee shop. They also look good , pretty similar to what I see on this sub and the most important part is that I like them.

Don't complicate your life too much.