I think the 'instructions' one finds out there regarding composting are because people ask for them.
"I'd like to compost, how do I get started?"
As if rotting requires some type of human coordination or permission to start happening. It doesn't. As soon as you put a banana peel anywhere, even in (heaven forbid! -) a trash bag, you have begun composting, whether that was your intention or not. Since decomposition can't be stopped or avoided, it's going to happen with or without your involvement.
There are faster and slower ways to do it, but really, what you have available to compost is what you have, so what diff does it make if you're following some instruction or not? Whatever you have, put it in. It's all correct. It will rot exactly the same in layers, turned, just laying on the surface, buried, in a bag waiting to go into a pile... it's not something you can control, except the speed at, and location of, which it happens.
I've said this around here before, sorry if it's a repeat for anyone reading this, but after a couple decades, the novelty of making the biggest possible pile, or the hottest pile, or the 'most correct' pile, or any kind of pile - and then having to move all of it again, to a garden bed, has worn off. Now I just put stuff around the garden in various ways, spread, slightly buried, whatever seems appropriate for the material I have and amount of it. Why would I want to move that stuff more than once? I don't, I won't, not how I want to spend my time or efforts. Also no longer lose anything to the ground under the pile, all decomposition happens where plants grow, much more like what mother nature does in the forest I believe.
