Personally I always use the hints when available. I also use others logs and any information I can gleam from photos. I guess the reason I do this is because when I discovered geocaching I was just a hiker...while searching websites related to hiking I ran across geocaching and it sounded kind of fun...like hiking with a purpose.
So for me it's not about making it difficult for myself to find but just getting to the cache then onto the next one.
I am fairly new at this geocaching so who knows....maybe down the road I'll try it for awhile without the clues and see how I like it.