@Boldline Sorry, there's more...
To answer again to your first question, yes I'm recording the screen (1 monitor specifically). I run these recordings the entire time I'm working as they don't cause a performance hit and it's "set and forget". My older setups handle it well also.
I usually keep OBS and other sensitive apps up on my secondary monitor. But there is an option in OBS settings also to hide its own screen from the recording itself. That can make your life easier.
You can technically limit to certain windowed applications, but it doesn't work very well for applications that heavily utilize pop up panels or dialogs if they're not sharing what it considers to be the same container (VS is one of them, iirc).
The only other "tip" I have is to enable the "Replay" function if you use OBS. Set it a rare shortcut like Ctrl + F12 or something. So say you set that buffer to 120 seconds, when you press the button for it, it will cut a clip for you immediately that is 120 seconds long up until the point you pressed the key. The caveat is you have to "start" the Replay Buffer, but there are settings to auto-enable it. The benefit I have found is when I'm in-between recordings writing an email sometimes I'll check something in a program I'm reviewing and see some problem but it will happen of course when I'm outside of the recording session. This still allows issues to be caught (within that time window) and that has helped me more than a few times.
That option can also save you tons of storage if you don't want to do constant recording. Just leave that functionality on and don't turn on record. You can still save your clips, but you won't have everything outside of that time window, obviously.
In Handbrake you can type in the time code manually also if you use longer recordings and it will slice the video within the time codes you put in.