I feel your pain. It is just the way the engineer mind works.
My engineer husband once built a picnic table. Fortunately, he built it in place because there is no way we could have gotten a crane in the backyard to move it. LOL
I learned after many years, that if I say "this is exactly what I want. Can you do this for me?" He usually do it, if I explain his might be better quality, etc, but this will work just fine for my needs and save him a lot of design time.