Agreed. When I focus on the quality (right contact, evenness, slow enough to be good,...) I have much better results than when I'm counting. That said, I'd guess most times I do less than 20 strokes and I'm good.
I know this goes counter to some posted opinions, but I've had no problems stropping the night before. Sometimes I do that just to streamline my morning routine ...and because I can take my time and practice stropping right the night before. I did that more when I was religiously following some of the patterns of others and counting my way up to dozens of strokes...only to have bad results because I was counting more than focusing on technique. It took me a lot longer to finally get a reasonable edge. When I take my time and focus on quality, I'm actually done sooner. Still, I sometimes will strop the night before, just because of the simple pleasure of it.
- Dale