  The field equations of modified gravity theories, when considering a
homogeneous and isotropic cosmological model, always become autonomous
differential equations. This relies on the fact that in such models all
variables only depend on cosmological time, or another suitably chosen time
parameter. Consequently, the field equations can always be cast into the form
of a dynamical system, a successful approach to study such models. We propose a
perspective that is applicable to many different modified gravity models and
relies on the standard cosmological density parameters only, making our choice
of variables model independent. The drawback of our approach is a more
complicated constraint equation. We demonstrate our procedure studying various
modified gravity models and show how much generic information can be extracted
before a specific model is considered.
