@steelerfan1 - the one thing I know is we get timing wrong, a lot. You almost never get it quite right. Once you know that you won't be "right", I think you have two basic decisions.
1. What's YOUR goal? You find so many arguments about debt reduction vs investing, risky vs safe, etc. But these are all personal choices. Even in the stock thread there's really smart people day trading, with their focus being on making money immediately. Honestly, I rather don't care what my net worth is tomorrow (I do track monthly but I've realized my emotions really don't change when it drops). My goals are to cover half of college for the kids, retire at 60 without limitation. I'm fairly conservative with the college funds but have around 10% in bonds in our retirement accounts, I used to have zero.
My risk tolerance is not your risk tolerance.
My journey is not your journey.
(We all have different needs and plans)
2. How do you want to be wrong? How would you feel if you carefully selected stocks and those companies underperformed the total market? I don't mean Exxon/ bankruptcy, but gained less than the total market. Now how do you feel if you get the total market, invest like most suggest on bogleheads, and the companies you would have bought do really well? That's a personal choice but I know I'm happy to do 90% of my investments in an easy, set and forget allocation. Then I have another account where I buy individual companies. Some do well, some don't.
Same question regarding timing. DCA is "safer" but you could lose out on gains. How do you feel if the market slides 5% the day after you buy? What if it gained 5%? I DCA most of my investments but max the Roth IRA immediately in January ("mistake" this year).
I haven't used the 3 fund portfolio, I've used the Paul Merriman approach, but that requires more holdings. There's definitely a benefit to the 3 funds. As I'm helping my 17yo set up his Roth IRA, assuming he listens to me, he'll be 100% total market until he has more than his annual salary (once he gets a full time job). Then he'll go with the bogleheads approach.
TL/DR - if I were to advise a random person, it would be to follow the 3 fund approach, keep it simple, DCA over the remainder of 2020 (I do have concerns about the rest of the year) and if you have more than absolute basic tax issues, hire a fee only FA to help assess.