Overrated unpopular opinions — am I overthinking this? [v4]

Looking for honest feedback, not validation. Not sure if this is the right place to ask, mods please remove if it is not. There is a lot of conflicting advice online and most of it is from 2019.

Quick context: I am relatively new to this and trying to find my footing.

Posting this here because the relevant subreddit has gotten too noisy lately. I tried three different approaches and none of them felt quite right.