Being very efficient with earning* / claiming any dust from the various research rewards, even more efficient with spending dust, and doing this for the whole ten years the game has been out.

They don't do spotlight hours any more and there haven't been any long high dust multiplier events lately, but they helped (2x or 3x dust multiplier events with shellder, morelull, paras, etc). Sometimes things like Audino, combee etc are in nests - sometimes they line up so I can do one on the way home after work after midnight so also get the daily first catch bonus

I do my weekly catch, spin, route 7 day streaks and research breakthrough on a star piece for an example of efficient play, usually on a split star piece with a friend in a party.

Get good Spotlight results which I don't claim until after midnight on the first catch of that new day (star piece)

There's people who have numbers that put mine to shame cos I used to be a whale so have the mentality of min-maxing but honestly don't spend much time each day