I also once felt bothered by what I am hearing the OP describe, until I started riding in competition.

There (where suffering and intense effort was expected), I seemingly forced my brain to start better tracking how my lever movements were effecting good and not-so-good shifts, and my technique magically improved from that point forward.
The intensity and repetition seemingly having reinforced some neural pathways.
Just like learning to argue with my (all of them older) siblings!

I still have annoyances with the shifting on used-bike purchases, where many factors can mess up the mental calibration I have developed.
Things like a shift lever needing lubrication (oil being good enough), or a "wrong" lever-travel/actuation balance, really forces me to slow my shifting effort with each gear change.
So besides perhaps changing the chain or freewheel, I often add a bit of cable housing liner to the bottom bracket cable guide, replace the cable housing, or even change the cable position at the rear derailer anchor bolt to adjust the actuation/leverage felt at the lever.
My recently-purchased Bridgestone features a roller as a bottom bracket cable guide, and the shifting using the low-end Lark-II rear derailer feels about as light as with Retrofriction levers. Slap-shift city!

I have had issues with using Hyperglide-style freewheels in friction shifting mode, particularly if the ratio spacing wasn't wide enough.
Shifting over "tightly"-geared Hyperglide freewheels means you can't always detect that your shift has even occurred, and dangerous ghost-shifting can strike you since those HG freewheel cogs give almost no audible/vibratory feedback as to a poorly positioned chain relative to the selected cog. And it seems to be yet more of a hazard when riding surrounded by other riders.

So, for spirited riding using friction levers, I find that the "sweet spot" for freewheels or cassettes are mostly pre-HG Shimano and Suntour units, the latter perhaps best exemplified by their later Alpha-series freewheels having bevels approximating the twisted teeth of Uniglide cogs.

A friction-shifted bike with all of the mechanical boxes checked is truly a pleasure to change gears on.
Though luckily, virtually all of the bikes that came with narrower than 8-speed cog-to-cog spacing came with indexing brifters from the factory.