cross stitch lovers: to grid or not to grid?

About a month ago I started this cross stitch:
http://www.123stitch.com/item/Silver...attern/12-1083

It looked simple and quick, but I made so many mistakes on that big snowflake on the right I ended up having to rip it out three times...the third time I ended up ripping the linen so bad I had to THROW THE PROJECT OUT. In over 20 years of stitching that has never happened to me!

This experience gave me pause, and I decided to looking into gridding my fabric (I've never done it before). It was horrible gridding on linen and I thought I was going to go blind. No matter how careful I was I ended up one hole off, and after five hours of this frustration I gave up.

I think I might just grid the snowflake part and not the entire linen when I try this piece again. I honestly wonder if gridding takes more time and effort than ripping out mistakes or starting over.

Do you guys grid? Do you do it on linen? I used the below tutorial for learning how to grid, but do you have any other suggestions to make it easier?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zk6mWyo4z10&t=1s