You cannot speed up other tasks. I can see why that would make sense, but my thought was that a tool like the metal detector, gpu, or Antenna, would be too small to share, and actually speed up production, whereas sending more than just one guy to search a whole forest seems more reasonable. There is an end game, hinted to in the opening lore document. I don't want to spoil too much, but I can promise that there is an end goal.