If recording is the fun part and editing is what makes you stop uploading, a fixed routine usually helps more than switching apps. This is the order that tends to save the most time on talking-head, vlog or gameplay clips:

1. Mark good takes while you record. Clap or say “mark” right after a take you like, or right before you retry a line. The spike is easy to spot in the waveform later, so you don’t have to rewatch everything.
2. First pass is cuts only. No music, no text, no zooms. Just remove false starts, long pauses and everything before you actually start talking. Most of the time saved comes from not mixing jobs.
3. Trim the opening harder than feels natural. Start on the first sentence that says what the video is about, not on “hey guys, so today…”. For Shorts and Reels the first couple of seconds matter most.
4. Captions last, from an auto-transcript. Most editors and the platforms themselves can generate them now. Fix names and jargon, break lines at natural pauses (around 5 to 7 words per line for vertical video) and keep them out of the bottom part of the frame where the app buttons sit.
5. Music only if it helps. Keep it well under your voice or skip it. Talking over loud music is one of the most common reasons people click away.
6. Export one 9:16 master and reuse it. The same file works for Shorts, Reels and TikTok; just check each app’s buttons don’t cover your text.

Capping yourself at one pass per step is what turns a 5 minute video from a whole evening into something you can finish in one sitting.

What part of editing takes you the longest? Happy to share what tends to work for that part.