In /etc/rc.conf you can disable a lot of the DAEMONS and have many working in the background. For example this would suit many:
DAEMONS=(!hwclock @syslog-ng @network !openntpd !@netfs @crond )
The '!' disables and the '@' allows others to start up in the background whilst others in the foreground are booting.
You can also speed up your boot and automatically login by altering the /etc/inittab.
Alter the lines starting with rm, rh, su to the following rather than putting them in wait:
rm:2345:once:/etc/rc.multi
rh:06:once:/etc/rc.shutdown
su:S:once:/sbin/sulogin -p
To auto login just add '-a username' (where 'username' is your login name) to the line c1 and only have lines c1 and c2 running. For example:
c1:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty -a username -8 -s 115200 tty1
c2:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty -8 -s 115200 ttyAMA0
You can # out all the unnecessary lines and start working while the last bit is booting in the background. Your inittab will probably looks something like this:
id:3:initdefault:
rc::sysinit:/etc/rc.sysinit
rs:S1:wait:/etc/rc.single
rm:2345:once:/etc/rc.multi
rh:06:once:/etc/rc.shutdown
su:S:once:/sbin/sulogin -p
c1:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty -a username -8 -s 115200 tty1
c2:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty -8 -s 115200 ttyAMA0
With a bit of fiddling around you will probably get it a bit faster still and you can make it boot directly to X rather than the command line. There's 101 different ways of doing it but I find this easy and works for me. Now I've just got to get around to profiling it
