Experience in recent years has made me more appreciative of the purpose of good, experimental, rigorous science. With the up-tick of popularity of rotary drilling for water wells, this science and engineering was applied to the ground water application. In other places, hours fighting lost circulation are saved. Even air-drilled holes benefit from proper foam use. Hours are wasted unsticking balled up tools or fighting lost-ciculation zones.
Remediation pumping wells in particular die quick deaths partly due to mud problems.
From my own experience, it does not take an excessive amount of time to get out the funnel and the balance, set up the mud tank and desander, and go to work. You might save time not doing it on 9 holes out of 10, but on that 10th, you really go in the hole. Information on exactly how to formulate mud is available from suppliers and their resident mud schools, demonstrations at conferences, and in available texts. I recently came to the astonished realization that step testing falls in that crack between theory and practice. Many recently educated hydrogeologists have focused more on aquifer analysis.