Yes it seems like you're using i3 quite differently. I agree that if you good discipline about opening and closing windows in the right workspace/tile i3 can give you a more structured layout. I just found for myself even if I tried I could not keep the discipline up (I doesn't help that I often work on several things at the same time).
I think that's the beauty of tiling WMs (and I consider scrolling WMs a subset), you can really adjust them to suit your work flow even if work flows might be very different. In contrast stacking WMs seem to be more a lowest common denominator type thing. They work with every workflow, but suboptimal.
I think my i3 "style" came from using a 12-inch thinkpad for many years. The small screen size and low resolution force you to work in certain ways. And if I had left 100 Firefox tabs open on that machine's second-gen mobile i5, I think it would have melted straight through the desk.