I normally follow that pattern too — but Catalina was unbearably slow in comparison to Big Sur for me. My new 16” MBP with maxed cpu and RAM regularly took nearly 2 minutes to boot to my Home Screen on Catalina with no startup apps. Regular apps took over a second. Upgrading to Big Sur made my laptop feel fast again. The only downside right now is that it feels like I’m always charging this thing. My 2014 MBP unfortunately still feels faster running on High Sierra though.