Crafting/gathering is such a nice break from the combat grind (especially if you are in POTD hell. HoH isn't nearly as bad imo, but that could just be because I've ground PoTD for so long (HW to now)) Granted I'm your standard all 80s DoH/DoL with BIS gear and almost BIS melds (because I'm lazy/cheap) that plays in spurts, so it's always been my fallback thing for giggles, and am slowly working on the dragonsong stuff (maxed miner, almost max botanist, and I'm right at the expert craft shit (not my favorite thing) for most of the DOH classes)
But yeah, abuse the beast tribes and your grand company turn ins. One thing to keep in mind is that it's useful for gearing up characters you aren't leveling once you have a max level guy and are high enough in both gatherers and crafters. Once you unlock ixal and moogle (and eventually namazu and dwarf) you can easily (albeit somewhat slower than leve grinding) level them up with minimal interaction each day, with basically no cost to you. Only thing is, if you don't actually do any gathering/etc, you will likely need to buy shards/crystals/clusters to fuel the creation parts of the quests until you get enough of the reward crystal things.
Another thing about the beast tribe quests, is that they are -solid- combat class xp for the tribes that offer them, after ARR. They make a nice diversion during ARR and for the most part HW, but they are really nice in both SB and ShB. Like doing all three will net you 1/6th of a level or abouts. They're really good stuff imo.