A lot of new players in Travian, Do not pay attention to the Task Master. You have to understand that these tasks will teach you the very basics of Travian and each of these task you complete should be a lesson.
Getting your resource slabs to higher levels is pretty understood, what i want to emphasize are the tasks which involve Buildings. After completing some of the tasks you will be given an option for your strategy. Now in Travian you have 3 options.
1. Be Aggressive
2. Be Defensive
3. Be a Farm

To Break it down, The Task Master will give you an option to either Build a Barrack or a Market. Loosely translated will you play offensive or defensive.
Now by playing either of the 2 its got its pro's and Con's but only if you are focused with your strategy. If you are unable to be aggressive or Defensive you will become a FARM. Which means you are being taken advantage of which is a complete TRAVIAN NO-NO!!

1. Being Aggressive
First you will have to build a Barrack, It does not mean that you cant build a market later on, Its just that you will focus on the Barracks first.
By Building a Barrack you will start to build your army, AN OFFENSIVE Army.
All you have to do is Raid other villages and keep doing so.
One thing you have to keep in mind, that you will need to guard your village too cause its a Travian is war game and their will other players out there to who have the same strategy, so to make sure that you are not being farmed too. Have some defensive army hanging around your village too.

2. Being Defensive
Well you will have to make the Market anyway, But Just because you are being peaceful that does not mean that you wont have to build an army.. Well in this case a defensive one. But for starters you start building Crannies, Crannies are very important in Travian.
Cranny
The cranny is used to hide at least some of your resources when the village is attacked. These resources can not be stolen.

At level 1 the cranny holds 100 units of each resource. Gaulic crannies are twice as big as the others.

HINTS In T3 the cranny is 66% as effective against Teutons. In T3.5 the cranny is 80% as effective against Teutons.

So Building Crannies is a Good Idea to save up resources, Plus it also help if you cant be online a lot.