Not all strikes are created equal

I'm a believer in basic egalitarianism. That is, I think giving everyone a chance to prove themselves is only fair. That said, everyone has their strengths and weaknesses. For instance, I'm not likely to ever finish a marathon, let alone clock in some world class time. But that's okay; I have other gifts. An analogous concept can be brought into your atemi as well.

When you think of atemi as an art, why is it do you think that we have myriad hand/arm and leg/foot strikes? It's tempting to think that some sadistic sensei in the Good Old Days™  thought "Yeah… the mudansha don't have enough to learn. I'm going to come up with a bunch of weird hand positions to give them something to do and hopefully confuse them!". But alas, that's probably not how it went down.*  Instead, different strikes have different purposes. For example, nukite uchi is more of a precision strike whereas seiken uchi is more about power. Of course, everything is on a continuum (i.e. "shades of grey"). But when I see people executing the aforementioned strikes in form with exactly the same amount of power, I feel like something's been lost in translation; either the precision strikes are being done with too much "oomph" (thus risking damaging the leading fingers) or the power strike is not living up to its name. To be honest, I see the former much more often than the latter. I think this is due to the mentality of "this is atemi and therefore I must put every ounce of power into this strike". This is a good way to get your fingers injured on those strikes where they're more exposed (ask me how I know).

As this applies to your non-martial life, I'm sure that you have many "techniques" for interpersonal dealings. Sometimes it's appropriate to speak in a soothing tone; other times raising your voice is appropriate. What would happen if you had only one of those tools in your set?

In conclusion, as you're practicing your atemi forms, I challenge you to think about the relative power that you could use with each and demonstrate that. From a distance, an observer should be able to tell that your koko uchi has a different level of power than your hiraken uchi. Notice I said "your"; it's important that you practice your art and no one else's. Which is to say that on an absolute level, my uraken uchi is going to be of a different absolute power level than yours. But within my own practice, my seiken uchi should be thrown with more power than my nukite uchi.

* Disclaimer: I wasn't around nor am I a time traveler, so I can't corroborate.