thanks op!
in summary because things got confusing
at some point, the game will start assigning you random toolbar tasks (a red toolbox in the toolbar like Grampas tell a story task--not the daily tasks, not the questline tasks)(for me it happened sometime this morning around mutant sheology being completed.)
each random task completed should drop shovels (is that right, op?)
when you get a random task,see how many people can do it/see if someone is already doing it
reenter your town close to when the random task should complete, clear only the random task, hopefully you'll have some time between regular task completions and random tasks, resynch your town, hope for a random task 2 that you already have ppl on,and repeat.
the issue for me (still collecting corn fertilizer for level 5) is that everyone is on the 4/8hour corn fertilizer tasks and they are well synched up (within a minute or so) for me I don't think the extra shovels are worth the time staggering (I mean, I might get lucky but I don't think it's plannable