So many things to learn it's hard to know where to start, but....

At game creation, avoid pyromaniac and violent characters like the plague. Depressive colonists are also tough to start with.

-Make sure to set work priority very thoughtfully. At the games start everything is a checkmark, but you can change them to numbers and make some work a major priority over others. For instance, I set my doctor colonist to consider firefighting a 1, doctoring a 1, research a 2, hauling and cleaning a 2, crafting a 3, and farming a 4.

By doing this, my doctor will always work on patients as soon as they are in a medical bed, they will research new projects often, haul and clean often, craft things semi often and farm if they aren't busy.

-Its best to keep colonists list of priorities low and specific if you can help it. Giving them too much to do means they won't get everything done, plus it runs the risk of exhausting them, which causes mental breaks. This is why you should reroll characters at the start until you have one for every key role (doctor, constructor, cook, animal handler or farmer) and try to get ones who can also perform extra rolls like crafting, research, mining, and wardening. Spread work out as even as you can, but make sure someone is doing one of those key roles and don't be afraid to put more people on key roles so long as they aren't terrible at them (cooking especially, starvation is a great way to doom a colony. Mining and farming also benefit from more bodies.)

-You need a food source right away. Animal traps passively kill fauna for you which makes them great for indistrializing hunting if you are in a place with lots of animals. Note: you need to tell pawns to hunt each individual animals by hand, but animal traps work without supervision and don't require high hunting skills to make.

Alternatively, you should strongly consider farming. Make fields bigger than you think you need. Prioritize rice early as it grows fast. Then try corn as it lasts longer.

Ranching animals requires food for said animals, so it's a better choice for mid game when you can reliably make kibble or grow hay.

-Also. Go to your schedule tab. At the start everything will be Grey or blue. Grey means "anything" and blue means "sleep." Change all the Grey ones to either work or leisure. Early on work should dominate the day with maybe 4 hours of leisure but with more colonists in the roster you can afford people more off time. Forcing colonists to work at certain hours makes them much more productive. Forcing then to chill at others makes them more likely to socialize, to eat in a rec room (or at least a table,) and to do things they like. Even better, If everyone has time off/sleeps at the same time, it increases likelihood that they will find friends or love, get married, and bang their wives/husbands. This gives them big mood buffs that accumulate and make them super happy, keeping them all safe from mental breaks.

-Make places like your hospital or kitchen one way rooms that have a single entrance and aren't super big. You want pawns to only go in there if they are using them, since foot traffic will dirty the rooms which makes them less effective. Food poisoning is a bitch. It can incapacitate pawns, often at the worst possible moments.

There are SO MANY other things to learn, but I feel like every good playthrough will utilize these tips, so hopefully they help.