First, I'm going to say, I don't think most have an issue with the speed of things as they currently are. (Skill level already impacts the speed as pointed out) At least not in the scope of this suggestion that DDT put up. I really do think that it is about the tedium of clicking the button to do the exact same action in the exact same spot.
I do like the options tho, so to answer that....
I think the loop idea would work ok for certain actions, such as fishing or picking rock/sand. (and this is what I think this particular suggestion is about ultimately) Reducing the clicking for something where you really are just standing in the same spot repeatedly clicking the same button, would be welcomed, but I don't know that it would work so well elsewhere where you have to move to do something.
For those instances, I think option 2 makes more sense. I'm going to use foraging as an example as it's one skill I know has a very visible difference between low and high skill lvls. When you first start out and your skill is 5, each action is slow. Picking grass or foraging for plants takes a while and fails often depending on your stats in those first levels. As you gain skill and stats improve, the speed at which you do those actions slowly increases and you fail far less. Then you get near max skill and the action is performed fairly quickly and you rarely, if ever, fail. That, IMO, is the way skills should be, and I don't think most people have an issue with that part. So maybe the first 25 levels of a skill should remain slower, but after that, the speed of the actions could be sped up a bit more than it currently as you gain skill level until you reach the 90s or max skill lvl when it could be instant or nearly instant.
Now, if you were to increase the amount of things we gathered as we gained skill as well, I think it would definitely improve the feeling that we spend too much time on these things. This would leave those new to the game those early levels to really figure out how Xsyon works, and those that are veterans can get their tasks finished sooner. It would also give an incentive to finally get those skills high rather than letting them sit in the middle or lower levels. Some skills don't feel like they change at all currently (I'm looking at you fishing!) So the increased amounts alone in these skills would be a definite improvement.