That's kind of the nature of non-destructive editing. While I do think the operation stack could be smarter about collapsing edits that are commutative, once I got a workflow order down I haven't really worried about this much.
The documentation actually has a pretty good example workflow that flows through mutations in an order that makes sense for most cases. Though it's not really that simple, and so you'll find yourself trying to relearn each time if it's something you do only on occasion.
It’s not your fault. It has the worst UX of anything I’ve used. Be careful if you use the mousewheel anywhere, you don’t know what unexpected action it’s going to perform. Drawing vector shapes for masks is wildly frustrating too. It does have a lot of powerful modules though… and it’s free.
I actually would prefer it to zoom, which it sometimes does. A couple of examples: if you're using the tone curve tool it'll change the exposure for the level under the pointer; or if you're hovering over a vector it will scale the vector when all you want to do is zoom on the vector so you can move its fiddly control handles; but then if you're hovering over one of the settings dials by accident it will move the slider left to right. Absolutely something I wouldn't expect and have not seen in any other software. The UX is mind-boggling inconsistent and unpredictable.
The documentation actually has a pretty good example workflow that flows through mutations in an order that makes sense for most cases. Though it's not really that simple, and so you'll find yourself trying to relearn each time if it's something you do only on occasion.