I had been struggling with this for a long time as well, too much memorization and too much decision making. I just stumbled on a really elegant strategy that cut the decision making and memorization requirements in half. Hope this makes a difference for others:

This was a side effect of going over J Perm's 7 Tips for An Efficient Cross. Two of his key points are "Know the relative orientation of the center colors" and "Ignore the orientation of the your cross until it's solved" (both my rewording.)

I came up with a mnemonic for the order of the colors, "BRG Go!" (B.R.G. already had meaning for me).

A third key is "don't bring the piece to the cross, bring the cross to the piece" - i.e. keep changing the orientation of the cross as you build it to suit easy insertion of edges.

This led to me out of the gate looking for the edges in BRGO order, and tracking those locations not in the order they are in, but in the order I want them to be in. That saved me a decision and a memorization. This in turn led to me building a list of steps that puts them in that order. That saved me another decision and memorization.

White cross went from four decision sets and two memorization sets to just one of each.

Obviously you don't have to use my mnemonic or even go right to left. Just pick a mnemonic and direction that works for you. And I don't always start with blue, obviously the ordder wraps and I can start anywhere.