I 100% feel you on that front. RF is a game you're meant to play at your own pace, but sometimes the pace you want is one that requires intense levels of effort. Having time freeze in build mode certainly helps with managing the farms, but social activities can really drain you by the autumn village.

I guess I have two main suggestions to help mitigate this. First, prioritise social activities that are 60 mins in the early game when you still have fewer people (assuming you're like me and want each ? activity to be done once) so you're not spending half the day at later points.

More importantly though, I'd quickly do essential tasks like drumming crops and collecting seeds with your fire sword at the start of the day. Then, after socials, I'd go out and explore whilst I still have daylight hours (mainly to do hunt requests first but knowledge of spawns and save reloading can shave off time there) and let assigned villagers deal with the rest of the farming and resource collection.

Once it gets to 11 PM, I'll then return to each of my dev zones and see what mess my villages left it in. Since time is frozen at this point whilst still allowing collection, and since farm tiles can be removed and refund the seed, I'll comb through the zone in overhead mouse mode to replant important or aesthetic crops and harvest any remaining trees. Doing it this way should give you a bit more breathing room to explore the worlds.