This connects with Proverbs 3:19f telling us exactly how God did the creation:
The LORD by wisdom founded the earth;
By understanding he established the heavens;
By his knowledge the depths were broken up,
and clouds drop down the dew.
The relation between understanding and the time taken to do something is roughly that with an increase in understanding, there is a decrease in time required. For us, there are limits: some things will take a minimum amount of time, no matter how much understanding is brought to the task; some people have so little requisite understanding that there are some things they could not do, no matter how long they tried. Therefore, taking large amounts of time to do something is not a mark of the doer’s understanding of the task, but quite the reverse.
For God, the lower limit need not apply, as it is related to our finitude, so one could assume the shortest time God, with infinite understanding would take would be instantaneous.
There is certainly no requirement from God’s side to take any particular length of time at all. However, he worked with understanding, knowledge and wisdom maximally, that’s the ‘method’ if there was one, but not method as we would understand it, but the connection of his capability to its object by his will.
I also remarked some time ago that time is the 'existential removalist.' The passing of time breaks the relationships between entities (including causal relationships). It dissipates connection, memory, relevance, affection, and detail disappears; the past is blurred and the factors that played are forgotten, while conclusions are crowded by subsequent motives and interests; the past, the very deep past, becomes such a distant country that all things must be different now because we've all moved on.
The long time between creation and now is the pagan view that admits lack of knowledge, to put it in the best light, or sets out to prevent knowledge, to put it in its worst light, of our creation; because the biblical view is that the creation is the direct link between God and us, featuring immediacy (6 days! and not that long ago) and close relationship.
As an instance of the operation of 'great' time, this quote from a history documentary on India I saw on ABC2 on Sunday evening (29 March 2009):
In the tale of life on earth the human story is brief. A few hundred generations cover humanities’ attempt to create order, beauty and happiness on the face of the earth.
The beginnings for most of us are lost in time, beyond memory. Only India has preserved the unbroken thread of the human story that binds us all. According to the oldest Indian myths the first humans came from a golden egg laid by the king of the gods in the churning of the cosmic ocean. Modern science works in a less poetic vein but no less thrilling to the imagination…
Interposing vast periods of time between God's action and our coming into existence pushes God out of our historical-existential range; he ceases to have any realistic involvement with our lives: consistent with a deist view, facilitative of a pagan view, but alien to a Christian one.
Looking from the other direction, if God did take vast periods of time to bring about the creation, which is the both the conventional pagan view often adopted by Christian, unwittingly, perhaps, then his action (in understanding) is indistinguishable from action without understanding, but by the mute creation being the outcome of physical processes; that such processes are remote from God is indicated by their contemplation rarely resulting in repentance, but often resulting in the denial or rejection of God as loving person.
It would seem hardly likely then, that a ‘method’ (or time process) which deflected attention from God would come from the hand of God. Some may argue that this simply leaves room for faith. However, this is faith conceived as fairy tale (faith as response to denial), and not faith as response to knowledge coming from God’s account of the creation. Hebrews 11:3, again.
