Five aspects do almost all the work. Conjunction (0°) fuses, sextile (60°) offers, square (90°) grinds, trine (120°) flows, opposition (180°) polarises. Orb — how far from exact you allow — is the only technical decision, and eight degrees for conjunctions, six for squares and oppositions, four for sextiles is a defensible starting set.
The traditional good-and-bad framing is the least useful thing in modern astrology. Trines describe capacities so easy you may never develop them deliberately; squares describe friction that forces skill. Almost every person with a genuine competence has a square underneath it.
Read aspects as sentences between two verbs. Mars square Saturn is not 'bad luck'; it is drive meeting restriction repeatedly until the person learns to work at a sustainable rate. Say that, and a reading stops sounding like a fortune and starts sounding like a description.