You have no control over how long a beer needs to condition. It's not arbitrary like deciding to rack to secondar or adding moss in the boil...It's not a personal preference, unless by that you mean voluntarily drinking green beer.....some noobs do that, but most folks will give the beer the timeit needs.
it's a natural process, and it;s done when it's done.
And there is no set time either, gravity and storage temp are the two biggest factor, but ingedients play a role in how long something will take to mellow.
The
3 weeks at 70 degrees, that that we recommend is the
minimum time it takes for average gravity beers to carbonate and condition. Higher grav beers take longer.
Stouts and porters have taken me between 6 and 8 weeks to carb up..I have a 1.090 Belgian strong that took
three months to carb up.
That belgian strong needed another 6 months before it even became drinkable....
Everything you need to know about carbing and conditioning, can be found here
Of Patience and Bottle Conditioning. With emphasis on the word,
"patience." 
If you are brewing for an event, like a holiday and it's a normal graivt beer you can add a couple weeks cushion time to make sure that the beer will be carbed and conditioned.
My normal turnover on a batch of beer is 2 months from grain to glass for an average beer...if I were aiming for a holiday I would add another two weeks to the bottling time...
But if it's a barelywine you want to serve for next x-mas, you are already a month late.
Now having said that, spices will fade, so you have to consider that for you x-mas beer. You want to factor in the gravity, knowing it's going to need to mellow if it's high grav, but you don't want your spices to fade either. So if your figure your beer may need 3 -6 months to mellow, you might want to over spice it, knowing it will fade.
How long to bottle condition?
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