We’re all different in how we like to do things, of course. In my case, if I didn’t have a handy Stream Deck button, I probably wouldn’t bother to convert them to smart quotes until the end of the writing project. I don’t want to memorize obscure keyboard commands, as I want to focus on writing and not looking up keyboard commands.*
*Getting quickly down to writing each morning is why I set up my One button to rule them all (which became two buttons to rule them all, as it turned out).