So we've all had by now a lot of unfun trying to get stations up to a full population, but there's a way around that. And it comes from the description for housing districts, namely the line that says they boost pop growth by 10%. Thus, the following instructions should help:

1) Do your usual build order and specialisation + prospecting.

2) But instead of building mining districts etc, instead fill up all the districts with housing.

3) With a gene clinic this should be enough to get you up to 10+ pops if playing organic.

4) Then replace housing with the appropriate districts and finally have a functional station years earlier that usual

5) If playing mechanical/robots - instead making the station an industrial one and build robot factories instead, then respec into the station type you need/want.