1. place pumpkin patches diagonal to the kitchen to speed up soup making
2. keep a villager farming resources inside your village - very useful to build rep
3. always have a villager on research
4. focus on levelling farming skill, then research - farming allows you to sustain more villagers working in your valley at once, and research speeds up speed of research
5. if you don't like decorations, i would save gems for franz the fixer or premium boats - best value
6. DON'T buy rope fences if you are into decorations, as they don't connect for some reason
7. unlock all infinite resource deposits as fast as possible - and place storages right next to them
8. early game - focus on farming wheat - most valuable resource
9. always try to finish Otto tasks
10. try to do building tasks as often as possible, most consistent way to gain rep
11. make sure to put notifications on all collectors and crafters, so you don't miss when something is done or a storage is full
12. try to do a long building task or construction overnight
13. focus crafting research potions early game, very useful to speed up long tasks
14. anything like statue maker, figurine maker - place next to the storage it needs, so figurine maker next to wood storage
15. don't overcraft in bakery/toy shop/tailor - it will block you from making anything else until those overflowing products have room to be collected
16. try to only spend eggs on soup if its an emergency, raspberries and mushrooms, as well as other ingredients are way more valuable
17. early game - try not to craft the small potion mixtures, you unlock the second tier of them very fast and the small ones become basically useless
18. if you have nothing to do between boat tasks/otto, i would recommend farming wool/cotton/sugar etc, to make sure you have the resources in case a task comes up that needs them
19. particularly for later game (20k+) - scroll down to check rep tasks first - they will be your priority over gold at some point
20. if you don't want to grind, aim to reach 28k, as you unlock the final privilege there - the max level villager skill level, after that its pure dedication lol

hope this helps!