How to extrude while obtaining better topology? I have an issue regarding the extrude operation.

If you avec a plane split in 4 face and you want to extrude each one of them in separate manner, blender will create 2 faces at the border each time. See shape 1 and 2.



Meanwhile I'm looking to get something similar to shape 3 where the topology is cleaner (now double face and less edges ).

Is there anyway to get this result in blender ?

Any help is welcome.

Here is the figure with face orientation in cas the other one isn't clear enough :
You can perform the following steps to get a clean topology with the same shape.

Select the first face and extrude downwards.




Now switch to edge select and select the other faces and the outer perimeter.




Repeat the same technique shown in the last two steps.