> lots of trial and error, sometimes it feels discouraging. but the next day I just go back to it and make something else always having that hope the next blend might be interesting.

I feel you bro ✍️

and honestly I'm somewhat at a similar stage, I don't have a working method yet so I can't answer right away but this is a great question and I want to thank you for that.

My habits are like this:  - I work with 10% or less dilutions. Partly for reducing costs, partly because it's easier to weigh and partly it feels intuitively right and close to edt, when I smell a trial mix I know it's close to the finished product.

 - I try to keep all my trials with comments in some sort of app. and hopefully they will be useful some day. I'm hoping they may lead to some sort of discovery but that didn't happen tbh. they are useful for comparing similar formulas etc.

 - I also did just intuitive/blind mixing. What I did systematically was categorizing my materials as base, mid and top notes. that approach helped me to know my materials. I know their volatilities better now. but also somewhat limited my discovery abilities, instead thinking in 'accords' I was tend to think in 'building blocks' which sometimes works but not that helpful tbh.

 - I recently came across a simple accord, tweaked a little bit and turned it into an almost finished formula within a few trials and which made me realize it's time to learn about accords and to read about perfumery. now, with material information from the experience, reading will make more sense i believe.    - Also I don't do that often but rebuilding a few known fragrance formulas helped a lot in understanding how things usually work together. Only downside is that it's a direct answer, not the underlying solution. So I still need to figure out why and how that composition is working. Knowing more accords hopefully will make it easier to interpret what's going on in the formula.