With the Myth release Toady has suggested introducing sliders for magic/mundane worlds, as well as violent/benign worlds, which got me thinking - why not have a similar thing for productivity? An option like that would allow you to speed up or slow down tasks such as mining, metalworking, or growing crops.
You could have a world where mining is slower, making surface construction more favourable, or one where crops take 6 months to develop requiring more planning for agriculture. If you wanted to, you could have a fort where weapons took months to painstakingly craft, where it takes over 50 years for a metalworker to reach legendary status. In that case you'd also need to allow a dwarf to pause a crafting job to eat then resume it later. Fort specialisation then becomes more necessary as well.
People who prefer things happening quickly could set the slider for all options to fast.
In addition to this, if a crafting task is designated as urgent it should be completed much more quickly, but at the expense of quality. So if you desperately need to prepare for an invasion, for instance, your one-month-per-sword fort can churn them out rapidly in a pinch but they would be poor quality.
In the meantime, I know mining speed can be modded, but is it possible to mod crafting speed? And how long do dwarves need to go before eating?