I was wondering when a task was considered finished. ex: when 'cleaning debris off beach' do you have to wait for your villager to drop the debris? Would it be faster to pick up the villager partway and drop it on the beach again???? same applies to any task where the villager has to travel a great distance.

In some cases you can tell this directly. A task that increases the food supply, like foraging or gathering the harvest, is only complete after the villager has reached its destination and gone through the graphic of unloading - you can tell this because the food supply figure isn't updated until that point. It seems you can then pick the villager up and take it back to the berry bush or other place of work.

If you pick up a villager who is carrying a basket of fruit or a bowl of water, the item falls to the ground and disappears.

Breeding might be an exception. The population figure updates as soon as the couple finish their embrace, so you might be able to move one of them away before they 'go indoors' - but that seems cruel!

I'd guess that for tasks like clearing the beach, you can pick the villager up after they've dropped the piece of debris.

Yes, you can pick up and move a breeding couple as soon as they've had a successful embrace, after the population number goes up, and before they go indoors. The baby will with the female wherever you drop her.

I agree it might seem cruel, but if one (and only one) of your pair is elderly, he or she moves much more slowly, and they won't be indoors at the same, anyway.

I would say a task is complete when you have the villager selected and it says that their action is "nothing"... unless you just want them to gain experience, I would let them alone, unless they wander off the job, because even if it says "experienced gained", you won't get the percentage completed up any (in the case of building, or the tech points (in the case of researching). The one thing that does help you to not only gain XP, but also get the task completed faster is picking up the villager after they put the food in the bin and dropping them on the berry bush (or farm land) - and the breeding trick.

I've noticed with researchers that they seem to gain tech points before they are finished "researching" -- they will work at the table for a bit, then gain the tech points (and they do a little "curtsey" at the same time this happens), and then continue working for a bit longer.

This is really easy to see if you only have one researcher -- I think you can speed up your research if you grab the researcher as soon as they do the little curtsey thing and drop them on the table again...not sure though

-- jen