Top chest bands modeled a different way

Regarding the top metal bands that lay atop the treasure chest, in your exercise, you created a new cylinder, copied and pasted the transformations from the top of the chest to the cylinder, inserted edge loops, inverted the selection, deleted the geometry, and then used the mirror modifier, created two more bands, and lastly, used the solidify modifier and gave it thickness. Something like that... 

I didn't do it that way at all, and wondered if that's okay? I mean aren't there other ways to skin a cat?

So, what I did was I selected the top portion of the trunk, went into Edit mode, selected the very top edges of the profile of the top of the trunk, duplicated them, separated them, merged the vertices to make all edges connected (may not have had to do that step), extruded the edge for width, and then added the same solidify modifier... Lastly, I duplicated the first and made two more.

I actually counted the steps between your way and the way I did it just to compare, and doing it your way, if I did my math right,  added 1 to 2 steps more than the way that I did it, and only because you had to delete the bottom portions of the cylinders. And I only compared the moves because I was curious,  just for fun. 

My true question is this. Aside from the fact that the way you showed us was to teach us new methods, which was awesome, is it okay for a modeler to go off the path and do things their way; the way their brain works? Should we be so rigid, for the lack of a better word?

Curious... thanks!