First of foremost if you always really want being the top 3, the most important thing is to find the good neighborhood, or at least most of the members are active and high level. Before you join the neighborhood, you have a chance to check their derby record.
First, try to do the easiest task first in the beginning, with that reason, so you will know how much time left you have. For instance crops planting, not all the crops are good for the derby points, and some crops are time consuming, such as chili pepper, strawberries, pumpkin, or potatoes.
Crops that need less time to finish are wheat, rice, soybeans and sugarcane. It's better to choose those crops to plant.
Second, usually if crops task are still available, i might do again, if not, i start doing truck task, by the way, try to do truck task from the very first beginning, way before you even do this task, once you have the "green check", dont click it, just leave it there, with a board full of green check, will save your own time before you really start doing it, at least you have 9 orders that has been done, and anytime you are ready to do truck quest, then you can start click it out to send the truck away, and you just do the rest of it, meanwhile always keep your production running, even you dont need the products. I always like to save my products, so when i need it, it's ready.
Third, if you have a lot of digging tools, this is a very good task, especially if you had finished expanding and designing your farm. I've saved a lot of digging tools in my storage, and when derby quest starting, i use it like less than 5 minutes to finish the digging task, and the good thing of digging task is it gives you big horseshoe points.
Fourth, try to avoid fishing task because eventhough you have enough fishing lure, how many fishing area are available, not much i guess, compared to how many fishing we need to accomplished, and also it takes time to "empty" the lake.
Fifth, "animal feeding task" is quite good, only if you focus on the chicken and cow, or you can consider "eggs collecting task". Dont try to do "bacon or goat milk collecting task", because it takes too long time to finished and you need a lot of the products.
Sixth, i also avoiding "town quest", because fully orders are needed, usually taken at 3 places, like for example, one customer has to spend their time in spa, bed and breakfast, and the cinema, and each of those place need a long time to finished. Dont get tempted with the big points but takes long time and a lot of products to get it done.
Boat quest is kinda good if you have a good neigborhood that can help you like mine, but i prefer to do the boat in the middle or last task so i can predict how much time i have left.
Last but not least, these all will effective if you focus on it and make time for it, if you really busy in that time, like you in your working hours, do the task that need a long time to finished such as truck task, or boat, dont leave it without doing any task, and start do the simple task when you have the time to spend, because the simple task needs you to be there to watch over it, so you can save your time.
I hope little tips that i shared with you can place you in the top 3. Dont make the stress out of it. The purpose of game itself is to give you some relaxing and fun. Good luck.
I put the screenshot below of how i doing it, check it out.