Make sure to get your mining up and going first thing.

[Skorpius]

I like to choose a founding world and designate it as Mining, then I make sure it has the following at least:
2 Mining districts
1 forge
1 Mineral processing plant.

Then I just make sure all other founding world have at least one mining district. then I switch to food generations.

Then energy last.

Meanwhile my construction ships are going around within my borders and building all the mining and research stations.

Sometimes its hard to do mineral processing plant, as you have to research that.

I make sure the above is done before I start expanding my borders. The rare times I do expand is to cut off another major power that is expanding towards what I want.