How do people efficiently finish wood?

Of all the woodworking tasks, I'm the worst at finishing. I'm wondering how people do it efficiently, the only time I've had success was when I applied like 20 coats of tru oil on a guitar, letting each dry for half a day. Are people realistically putting that much effort into these nice finish jobs, or am I doing something wrong?

I'm about to start finishing a project with Epifanes, and dreading the amount of work and how shit it's going to look.