A smart label printing system and method for printing smart labels is provided. The smart label printing system enables the expedited programming of the RFID tag component of the smart label so that delays due to the unequal time between printing the exterior of the smart label and encoding the smart label are avoided. The smart label printing system comprises a thermal printing unit to print the exterior of the smart label as well as an RF driver to program the RFID tag embedded inside the smart label. Methods are provided to increase overall throughput speed of the smart label, including prioritizing RFID tag data over exterior printing data in a RAM, compressing RFID tag data sent from a host computer, pre-loading fixed and regularly varying data, and predicting variable unknown data through the use of an artificial intelligence model. In addition, methods for uniquely arranging programming antennas and media pathways which act to speed up overall programming speed are also provided.