4e was not a game that easily supported the stories I liked to tell, and I had to change my GMing style to match the system. And with that added learning curve, I never got to a point of comfort where I could work around the system's assumptions. I was never in my comfort zone.
The system doesn't really have a lot of assumptions. I wrote into a 4e Organized Play, a pure roleplaying encounter. Not a skill challenge. Just letting the PCs interact with NPCs and letting them mull what was going on. Each time I ran it, I was asked if the PCs were in a skill challenge and I responded, "If you're in a skill challenge, I'll let you know."
I think a lot of early 4e adventures really encouraged the idea that every routine set of checks should just be replaced by a single skill challenge, and then no more skill checks for the rest of the adventure. But that's not actually inherent to the system. Skill challenges are just there for the DM to say, "Hey, I want a meaningful, important set of roleplaying that involves the whole party and has a lot of skill checks. How do I get everyone involved rather than just one particular PC dominating all the action? What's the benefit of success? If they fail, what's the cool outcome that happens? And let me decide this in advance rather than on the fly."