Let me describe my workflow. Currently I mostly take photos for joy, not for living. But as I earned money from the photography too in the past, I can say the professional workflow doesn’t differ much.
Tomorrow I with my friends made a lot of photos from a pleasant location with a model. I’ll view or convert them with default settings and make subsequent choices with further adjustments. The most important part here is: 1. In order to judge, one needs the good natural looking starting image. And 2: My practice says - if the scene looks good itself and requires no tonal adjustments, the final image can get no additional adjustments besides the ones applied at the starting point.
So the good looking starting point is a must have. Of course, some images are HDR and require further “playing with”. Some images have missed white balance. Sometimes the exposure is bad and requires correction. But the most - the most of the images require “common” default adjustments until the final picture. Adding local contrast by the diffuse or sharpen or contrast equalizer modules can be required, or not, depending on the picture. But it is separate from “default” settings.