For the best optimization put all your points into Common Exponent until you notice a slowdown (either you can't do eternity challenges or get supernovas or buy AP that fast) in which you should swap the points to IP Gain and farm EP until that slows down. Keep this loop up.

I recommend when EP farming to put automate Eternity to one number higher than your cheapest Lab upgrade so if its 1e19 cost then put automate to 1e20 and you can use this to tell when your EP gain is slowed too much via it taking too long to reach the automate number.

You should now have free upgrades to your Research Lab. This makes it so its completely pointless to ever put any points into IP Gain since there will always be points there.

But you also don't wanna dump all of your points into Common Exponent and instead want to use a 1:2 ratio between Gen Power Exponent and Common Exponent. A simple way of putting it is divide your Research Points by 3 and use that for Gen Power and dump the rest in Common.

I have found this to be much faster than what most people recommend which is dumping all the points into Common Exponent.

You should also respec your Lab upgrades to make sure the math is correct I'd recommend just kinda doing it whenever you feel like it or when you have a large amount of points that aren't spent yet.

Example:

Once you've reached 10 unites you unlock Lab and RP upgrades automation. This means you basically don't have to bother with Lab anymore. Turn on Autobuy Laboratory Upgrades and set your RP autodistribution to 25% Gen Power and 75% Common Exponent

It should look something like this: