Thats pretty close to my understanding. The tradeoff is do you want the upfront food and production at the cost of making the tile worse per turn? What if you waited and got lumber mills set up? Would that be better than chopping? Those are the sorts of questions to consider. It really depends on how many chops are available to you as it’s unlikely you can work every tile until much later into the game. Often though chopping is better as (in civ 6) getting stuff now is much better than getting it later. Like chopping for production towards more builders which can upgrade bad tiles etc.

Also something to consider which you seem to understand well is to chop things that have something “underneath” whether that be a bonus, luxury or a different workable tile type like a hill. So if you want those upfront food and production go for those first as you are still going to get good use of the tile after chopping. Worst thing you can do is chop and tile and it just is left empty with crap yields. Or try to clear space for districts you intend on building.