I used to teach guitar and I found that students would work extremely hard trying to make every chord perfect before moving on to the next chord in the progression. The end result is they learn their chords quickly but don't learn timing. Most beginner guitar players struggle with timing even after they've learned chords.
I would tell my students to 'grade' their timing on the the song (how well they kept in time) from 1 to 5 where 5 being perfect. AND then grade the quality of their chord changes 1 to 5 where 5 is perfect. I encouraged them to ALWAYS strive for 5 on timing at the expense of the score on their chords. What will happen is they will excel at timing and rhythm as they get better at chords.
So - as you learn a new song with new chords - don't worry about perfect fingering - focus on timing. The chords will come, but if you don't get the timing early, you will struggle to get it later.
100% agree. When I took piano all those years as a young lad, a metronome was always present especially after learning pieces line by line, note by note. So thankful for those painstaking lessons. Listening to my recorded tracks these days, I'm pretty much on time everytime. I hear a slowdown every now and then but no one's perfect. I love listening to other musicians play. I like to hear the subtle mistakes. It makes it real. While some other musical instrument players critique others incessantly, I relish often in those tiny mistakes, missed chords or notes, guitar or vocals, things that I try to keep out of my performances. I also keep out of my life the musical instrument players who have nothing to do but complain or attempt to make a tune exactly the recording versus making it their own. I fired my brother over such and incident in my band days. He's still a very accomplished drummer...😆. I could go on telling of my experiences. I might get slightly sidetracked too. I hope this helps. Beginners have more tools these days than I had back in the 60's and 70's when learning but the principles are the same.
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