Dwarf fortress is not a competitive game. It's up to you how you play, toward what goal, using which rules, the only thing I would ask is that you be careful not to misrepresent how you play the game when making claims. I.e., don't claim that you are playing some ridiculously difficult challenge fortress while omitting the fact that your dwarves are [SPEED:1]. Other than that, do what you like! Enjoy your sandbox. Kohaku's post about sums it up. If your goal is to struggle with default speed dwarves getting slaughtered by everything at their plodding pace and seeing if you can survive, hey, cool! But not many people will really look down on you for cheating, even excessively, if your goal is simply to create. Actions taken to reduce the amount of time spent "watching" are common, since people have responsibilities other than playing DF all day. Turning off invaders is also your choice. I tend to like them because they add an interesting element, but I ended up making it so Kobolds would automatically freeze to death upon reaching my fort because they were somehow teleporting inside my fortress walls past 30 traps, past 30+ chained war grizzly bears, past raised drawbridges, past the crowded living area of the fort, and walking off down the hallway with my artifacts before finally being caught. It was creeping me out.
Personally I tend to mod in reactions that allow my dwarves to combine underground plants with junk stone to create ore, wood, whatever I might need. This is partly because I never seem to get Liasons to trade with, partly because I hate buying anything brought to me by traders, partly because they never bring enough no matter how many years in a row I only request a single type of item, partly because for the sake of megaprojects it's just faster to create what I want instead of engaging in excessively-hasty mining out seams and the like. It also ends up being a very useful way to get rid of junk stone without just atom smashing it or god forbid, using it to make things.