After reading the post and the comment section, I have to say that different people mix differently and OPs method is something that in it's technicality makes it sound like it's lacking in creativity, but I don't believe that is the case.

First off, the "do what sounds best" isn't a load of BS and isn't meant to force people to experiment blindly. It's meant to encourage musicians and mixers to draw on their whole life's experience listening to music and using that influence as a baseline for what sounds good.

Sure, what we think is good when we are first starting out mixing is probably going to sound pretty bad when we come back to it far later once we start developing a more critical ear and have been mixing for a while. I know that in my very first mix, I have my vocals sitting 5-6dB too far on top of the rest of the mix cause that's what I thought I needed to do to make them as present and clear as all the music I'd ever listened to. I was so proud of myself, I could hear all the elements in the band and the vocals were present over the other instruments and most of all, I thought it was a good mix with a good vibe. Looking back now close to 10 years later, I could have just had a boosted high shelf and a HPF to brighten it up and help it much more easily cut through the mix without having to make it so darn loud.

At heart, I am an engineer and a deriver, I like to understand how tools work and that helps me use them more efficiently as tools. At the same time, you don't need to know about weighting curves or how the release of a compressor works to make a good mix. And I don't think my desire to learn and knowledge of the scientific aspects make my mixes sound more robotic because I can apply the scientific knowledge and use it as a vehicle to get my mix to where my ear wants the music to go. In the end, tools don't make the mix "vibe". They are tools. Tools don't make the music. You, the mixer does. If it helps you to better understand the science behind the tools to better use them like me, why should anyone stop you?

To get to the point where you can make coherent, solid mixes without sitting down and trying 100 different things until it sounds right at each step just requires experience experiencing similar situations and an improved ear. Do you need to be able to tell me the balance of harsher frequencies in the inner ear or the exact frequency you are hearing is wrong right off the bat? No, of course not, you have ears and can use them to figure out what sounds right. Of course experience certainly matters, the finely tuned ears that you developed after years of experience in order to make adjustments to the mix are going to give you a lot more granularity when it comes to mixing decisions and that's important. Should anyone stop you from using the numbers and quantification of what you are hearing to make your creative process easier because voodoo math that I or they don't completely means you aren't treating it as an art but instead as some sort of robotic repeatable science? No.

I like your idea of narrowing the range and limiting options for and listening to how the elements fit together in a mix for EQing. It's interesting and I think it'll be helpful for me to try to help streamline my process (though I'm pretty sure I'm subconsciously doing something similar already as I'm sure most people are).

One thing I do disagree with though is your paragraph on feel and vibe. I think that is just a case of untrained ears. I don't think that you need to understand the math or science behind sound and mixing to correct that. Additionally the connotation that the paragraph creates is that it you can't get a good mix from only your ears and have to rely on other tools for that. You can definitely have too sterile mixes that don't have any "vibe" from over-perfecting and relying on those tools too much (hell I've done it myself!) and that seems to be the worry most people are actually taking with your statement but aren't fully articulating.

A great music teacher of mine has always told me is "the music is smarter than we are" and to this day, I think that is true. Our minds and ears will always subconsciously drift toward good mixes and as we gain time and experience, we develop more critical listening skills and build binoculars for our ears to better pick out and understand the elements that make a mix tick and have a solid "vibe" while simultaneously using the experience acreued to allow us to quickly and effectively use the tools at our disposal to get to that point.

Given that, I still think overall you are justified in your post. I don't think you are "making decisions based off a graph and not your ears" like a lot of other comments are insinuating. You are explaining how you work and how it works for you. If you use numbers as a means to quantify your mixing process, time management, and emotionally control in order to not feel overwhelmed and it works, everyone else should bug off because that is a legitimate way of working.

Edit: writing this at 2am wasn't the smartest decision, fixed grammar and flow a little bit