If I may put my airworthiness engineer hat on for a moment - at the end of the day, it really doesn't matter much anyhow.
The numbers used in most light aircraft maintenance schedules are basically convenient round numbers invented around WW1 when somebody decided we should have a go at something along the lines of regular scheduled maintenance, instead of just waiting for aeroplanes to break then fixing them. They were a best guess then, which have somehow perpetuated for a century or more.
Whilst the basic design engineering done by aircraft and engine manufacturers is pretty good - the predictions of component life and wear on anything much simpler than, say, a Boeing 737, are only marginally better than fag-packet level. Considerable conservatism in basic design work means that mostly this doesn't matter, and anything missed usually gets picked up and solved with Service Bulletins within the first few years a model is in service.
Add to that that there really isn't a common operating environment for light aeroplanes. It stretches credibility to think that a C172 flying student pilots out of Dundee, and another flying tourist flights over the Grand Canyon will see similar wear and load in the same places, at the same rates. Yet both are likely to be being maintained, bar a few minor differences, to the same maintenance schedule.
So, basically - try your best to comply with the regulations, and to be consistent - but where you get it wrong, the chances of it making any real difference to anything, are absolutely tiny.
G