Well, it’s the usual beveling techniques, there’s nothing strange about it. Can you post some screenshots? To see what you mean that your results are not clean enough. There are times when you have to do things manually and it may feel tedious. Selections methods sometimes help you, sometimes they don’t, so going in manually is usually the best approach.
You can bevel with the modifier, with the actual geometry tool, with weights, with the node, etc. Each have their own pros and cons, and they all depend on having good geometry. How Ewa approaches it in the chapter is a great way. Perhaps as you watch more and more courses and practice modeling more and more and see other ways, you’ll get used to it? It’ll also depend what your end goal is, if things are not going to be so close to the camera and so on.