Shoutout to the finisher who told me my 220 grit was pointless on maple

I was at the woodworking show in Grand Rapids back in March and this older guy running the finishing booth watched me sand a maple sample for like ten minutes and finally said, "you're polishing a surface that's already done, you're just burning time." I brushed it off at first, but I tried jumping from 150 straight to my stain on a scrap door the next week and the color took way more even than my usual three-grit routine. Turns out I'd been sanding maple past 180 for years out of pure habit and probably wasted more hours than I want to count. Now I'm second guessing my whole schedule, so what grit do you all actually stop at on maple and cherry before stain?