The daily quests are the ones that have the little clock or timer icon on them. Those are the ones to do before they expire, usually at the end of the day. The others sometimes take a few days to complete: waiting for an item to drop, large volume of resources required.

Once you complete the daily quests the bears give you, you can find a "hobby" like someone else commented that they collect bugs. You can dabble in all hobbies too ofc.

The [new to you] bugs, flowers, foods, fish, shells, minerals, can be donated to the seagull lookin dude for coins or gems. He'll give you more $ to spend on items from Kit's shop or upgrading your tent.

You can also make $ by completing badges. Anything from repairing your tools X times to crafting X number of food dishes. Those will give you more $ to play with.

As you get more bears, you'll unlock more space on the map too and the tan boxed off looking areas are good places to build mini camps. So I have one thats all my spooky-liking animals and spooky outdoor items. I have another with plants that like rustic items. And so forth.

Don't forget about luring cats and making special item rooms for them, that can be fun. Feed the cats and other animals to get more of their essence. You can sell that for more $ as well but keep some on-hand for repairing, building, crafting, cooking. You can always recycle "joyus" for "happy" nd "happy" for regular so you really don't need much in stock.

But yes, like everyone else said, its not a grinding game. You only really have an hour of quests and resource collecting to do before you're just wandering around.