not having to change habits later.
If everybody thought like this, we would still be banging rocks together.
I am not sure about your use case, but IMO learning Docker first would be a good default. It is more wide-spread than podman. If you want (or need) to, moving on to podman would probably not be too big a step.
No flame intended. Quick question though - out of curiosity: what is specifically your use case for podman?