Thanks for the response, Zenetar!! 
I'm sorry if I didn't make it clear; but I did not mean "skipping" dungeons. My point is (for efficiency):
I don't go to a dungeon until I am relatively strong and could afford to arrange certain charms (instead of the "strongest ones") into the gears so that I get the skill points I need.
Re-efficiency: while my first (clueless) char leveled up fast and ran dungeons more or less in the pattern you described, the other ones I made took all their time carefully farming dungeons very early, using them and their differences to level up every skill and never using jobs except to move from a city to another, thus not gaining much stat points from job. While very slow in the beginning (though it lets you farm all charms easily), this method is a lot faster eventually (you catch up with the "fast-leveling" char) as you have a lot more growth available when you really need it*, you've already farmed skills (it gets more annoying to do at higher levels) and you can easily use jobs to fix your stats to be where you want them to be.
From an AP-efficiency point of view, this is the best you can do as you farm dungeons/events and farm all skills at the same time, never needing to run the arena even, if you do things well (or just for survival/cheat death). Taking it slow also lets you update your gear as you gain stats, while going too fast through levels often finds you lagging behind charms-wise (thus the feeling of having to play your "strongest" charms to survive and not being allowed much variety in PvE/PvP). Last it allows you to build up high HP/Spirit through farming their related skills, which gives a
huge boost in early levels (by roughly level 17 IIRC you can see a difference of +100HP or so between someone who's leveled up all these skills, not even counting mentoring - and someone who's just been using jobs to gain levels fast).
Now my philosophy is that you have to play however you want, because whatever path you choose, you can always make up for any mistake later on (or almost), so if you get bored taking the slow path, by all means speed it up! There's no
right way to do things after all, just play in the way that suits you best.

* My first char, like most of the "speed-leveling" chars, ended up in his mid 40s with already 900/900 growth and the only way to gain stats at this point is to farm skills and drink an elixir (+1 stat) once a day, every day. Had he kept more growth, things would have gone much, much faster for him.
Keep in mind that it's possible to get to lvl 34 or so with just 1/900 growth (never gaining stats from jobs). Using jobs early can be alright to fix up some stats but overall you shouldn't overdo it, thinking it'll get you further faster.