I am very new and overwhelmed! Here are tips and tricks I learned (mostly from here, here and here, and here) that are worth archiving.
A simple trio of skills is cooking-plants-animals, medical-social-intellectual, and construction (optimally also with mining and artistic). The doctor pawn is your most valuable, so give it your best long-range weapon and vest. (Flak pants slow a pawn down so much they are not worth wearing. Sell those.)
You can zoom out and double-click to count things (berries, wood, etc.)
In the assignments menu, change all pawns to "attack" so they will defend themselves. Also turn off recreational drug use. Beer, smokeleaf, and ambrosia can be set to mood below 33%.
In the food restrictions menu, turn off the categories of corpses, plants, raw resources, and manufactured. Turn off the subcategories of raw meat and (uncooked) animal products Turn off the individual foods of hay, kibble, chocolate. Turn off raw vegetables except for agave and berries.
In the work menu, use manual priorities of 2 through 4. This allows using priority 1 to task all pawns to an urgent task. Use shift with left- or right-click on the headers to change the priority for all pawns. At the very beginning, give your three colonists each a different highest priority among construct, haul, and grow/plant-cut. Have that third colonist who is skiled at plants clear the construction sites of plants so the colonist who constructs can work more efficiently.
In the architect menu orders sub-menu, right-click allow all items.
Allow the doctor to self-tend within that colonist's personal health menu.
Buildings that are 13×13 get complete rooves. Perhaps make the first buildings with wood walls 11×11, so you can eventually surround them with stone walls before reclaiming the wood (without risk of the roof portions falling).
When you put floors in a building, also put a small "deck" outside at each door. Then the dirt from colonist's feet will be likely to fall off on that floor area, before the colonist enters the building.
Use an indoor stockpile with normal priority. Later, make an outdoor stockpile with high priority for those items best stored outdoors.
Turn on the toggle that rebuilds in your home zone.
Separate beds several steps apart, so colonists do not disturb each other's sleep. Put a torch and campfire in the room (or a campfire in the hallway if each colonist has its own bedroom). A table with a stool per colonist allows eating at a table. Make a chess table and one other recreation source.
Put the wood-fire generator outside the barracks in its own room.
Each bed should have an endtable and dresser. As an alternative to wood floors in rooms that do not have a worktable and thus need cleanliness, you can grow daylilies on a dirt floor to make that room attractive (daylilies grow in torchlight or lamplight). Eventually large sculptures create attractiveness efficiently.
A stonecutting table turns rock chunks into usable bricks. Make a stockpile zone near it that only accepts chunks. This table and the stove can be set to "drop on floor" and have an ingredient radius of about 25.
The kitchen should be a small room that no one walks through unnecesarily. Build a wood floor under your stove to help kitchen cleanliness stay above -1. Use two bills when making simple food, so the first uses meat (which spoils faster) and the second uses plants. A cook with skill below 8 might make bad meals, so use a bill with a single meal at a time (so you don't make multiple bad meals at once) that maintains 2 to 4 simple meals per colonist. (A colonist eats 2 simple meals per day.) Set the kitcne room as a stockpile zone with low priority and all items cleared: this allows the meals dropped on the floor to be counted by the bill before anyone transports them to the freezer room.
Build a pair of doors into your freezer room (like the entrance to a zoo's aviary). The freezer room is a stockpile zone set to only accept meals, meats, unfertilized eggs, milk, fresh animal corpses (but not insects), plant matter, and herbal medicine. Build two refrigeration units to be safe. Set the refrigeration units to -10 degrees celsius. A wood-fired generator is simple and recommended for newbies.
Build the butchering table outside. Use two bills, to prioritze smaller animals first since all animals take up similar floor space in your freezer room. (Shelves in the freezer room can also help. Copy the settings from the freezer room's zone onto its shelves, then change the priority to preferred.)
You can tell colonists to delay harvesting until a plant is mature by declaring a growing zone on the plant and then turning off sowing. This will automate picking plants (berry bushes, heal root, ambrosia, etc.) and delay chopping down trees until they yield the most wood.
On very fertile ground grow some rice (fast), strawberries (slow but more yield), and cotton (for clothing). On less fertile ground (70% or more) grow some potatoes (slow but efficient). Adjust the proportions based on how many colonists have decent plant skill: less rice and strawberries if a single farmer's labor is being used. Later on grow corn, which is the most slow yet efficient.
To see what meat animals to hunt, sort the animals list by what is aggressive, and only hunt what will not attack you back. That list will also sorting its unagressive animals by how much meat they provide. Move to the far side of the animal, so it will flee towards you buildings when shot at.
If you notice a nearby wild animal that is injured and bleeding out, set it as being hunted but do not actually hunt it. Then your colonists will gather its corpse when it dies.
Once your kitchen is reliable, edit food restrictions so no one eats packaged survival meals any more.
Pawns who are drafted have a line under their name.
To defend against agression, hold the line at a doorway. In the manage areas menu make a new zone just inside a doorway. Then tell a tanky pawn (or pet) its only allowed area is that zone, so it will defend that doorway. Set that door to "hold open". Have your other pawns in a back line.
Angering an animal by attacking it or clumsily taming it might cause others of its kind to also become aggressive.
The butcher table is a place to increase cooking skill without any risk of creating food poisoning.
Cutting stone does not increase crafting skill.
The best medical training is done by capturing a prisoner and constantly installing and uninstalling peg legs or wooden arms.
Have the colonist with the highest social skill accept the honor reward from quests.
On day 3 you have a trader or visitor. On day 4 is a dangerousanimal (if possible). On day 5 or day 6 a lone raider appears.
The gray background bar behind a colonist's icon at the top of the screen fills as their mood increases.
You can use CTRL and SHIFT to change bill quality by 100s or 1,000s.
After changing priorities, you can draft and un-draft colonists to reset their to-do list queue and have them immediate adopt the new priorities.
If you gather in a caravan's tiny map (after being attacked) use a stockpile zone to ensure the game adds those items to your inventory.
You can re-order the colonist list at the top of the screen by dragging it.