How do I make technical decisions with an actual strategy?

You make good calls one at a time, but there is no larger thread tying them together, so each decision starts from scratch. That is tiring, and it leaves your choices vulnerable to whoever argued last or whatever broke most recently. The absence of strategy is not a lack of intelligence. It is a lack of a stated direction to decide against. A strategy is simpler than it sounds. It is a small set of principles and priorities you decide in advance, so that individual choices become easier and more consistent. It is you deciding, once and calmly, what matters most, so you do not have to relitigate it under pressure every time. Sit down and write a few sentences: what you are optimizing for, what you are willing to trade away, and where you are headed over the next year or two. Keep it short enough to remember. Then run your next few decisions through it. You will feel the difference immediately, because the hard part will already be decided.