I came to this idea while looking at another idea. That idea can be found here. This is an exact copy paste of my reply.
http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=24198.0"Programmable schedules?
I like.
But... We need a realistic day first. Right now our dwarves work for about a month then sleep for a few days.
I want a variable speed option first.
I remember playing a Sid Meier game but I forgot the name. It was about ancient Rome and every citizen represented a hundred but that does not matter.
Anyway, there was a wheel thing in their "profile" that had red and blue areas. One of them was a working time and the other was leisure during which they could go shopping, each, sex, wrestle a carp or kick a god in the balls. etc.
We need programmable time segments. Like every 6 hours. That divides the day into 4 segments. From what I know, Dwarves sleep for 6 hours. So one segment can go to sleeping. The other three segments we could assign this way.
Work, work, leisure, sleep.
A work segment can be divided into a subsegment which we can specify what he would do each half hour of the segment which makes 8 subsegments total.
Alternatively, we could have 3 segments of 8 hours each. Work, leisure and sleep. Why this is good? Think cave adaptation. Outside workers could work during night time. I will copy paste this into a new thread. This is a great idea."
I would love if both suggestions could be thought over. Sure this requires a mass code rewrite but perhaps something similar can be applied to the current system.
I say a rewrite is worth it. Lets wait for Today one to confirm it.