I maintain that, if you learn how to do the job properly in the first place, it takes not much longer than your stop-gap methods and yields far superior results. More importantly, I have no choice; I have to work fast and I have to follow recognized procedure/formatting/protocol or I don't get rehired by my client. And our OP is not in a hurry as far as we know, so he should learn how to do the job correctly.
You may have done it on "professional" projects, but you aren't an audio person. Things like doubling and quadrupling sound bytes are problems that I must correct when the project comes into my studio. And it's not simply erasing the extra sound bytes; each one must be examined to be sure that it is a true duplicate and not a secondary sound source before removing it from the time line. Or I'll have to undo all of the processing done to sound bytes by the visuals editor and/or relocate the original sound files. This all takes time which is billed to my client. And, by the way, I'm not taking the fall for a visuals editor who doesn't know their job; if the audio files are FUBAR I'll let the client know and explain exactly what was wrong, and why I'm going over the expected budget. And when my files go out to the re-recording (mix) team they expect that my projects will follow correct procedure/formatting/protocol no matter how tight the deadline, otherwise they will want to work with a different sound editor who will follow the expected procedure/formatting/protocol.
Learning how to do things correctly from the beginning is important, and bad habits are very hard to unlearn. In the long run it saves you time, gets you the job, and avoids potential embarrassment.