Well if you really want to uptimize the curating part...you make sure you curate a post that has super potential within the 30mins at 100%..if you resteem it then aftewards and the post will make hundreds of $$ then your curated voted weighs heavy and you can have big awards on it..
but this is a tactical game and as you say that you dont have a lot of time, quite difficult maybe ;)
Yeah i generally do the same but don't worry about when i upvote to much. Maybe in the future i will when i have more time