I have some interesting tips that beginners to TS4 should definitely incorporate and some of these strategies have probably never been tried out by veterans either:

Multi-Tasking Tips

• Why work on one need at a time when in TS4 you can fullfill 2 or 3 at once:
• Place a book or Tablet in a sims inventory and interact with this before going to the toilet. Your sim will continue to work on his/her fun skill while taking a dump.
• When your sim has a meal you should consider having a tv in the room to fulfill the fun need. The better the fun rating the most you will benefit. It is also a great idea to have multiple sims eat together to fulfill the social need at the same time.
• While baths maybe a good option, showers provide more benefits to changing your sims emotions. The speed of each is determined by their rating so showers can still take longer than baths.

Sleeping Advanced Tips

• To get the most out of your day it is a good idea to invest in the best bed straight away. An Energy 4 bed takes 10 hours to replenish your sleep from the red zone along with giving your sim a sore back most days. It takes 6 hours to replenish your sleep with an Energy 10 bed along with the added benefits of 10 stress and discomfort reduction (stabilizes and boosts trait emotions). You would be surprised how much easier it is with a $12,000 bed
  
  
• I did some further research into studying sim sleeping habits. If you are really into micro management still then you should make your sim sleep for 4 hours and wake them up for 2-3 hours and then rest them until morning. This is how our ancestors used to sleep and will allow your needs to stay stabilised better throughout the day (you also don't have to waste time going to the bathroom or eat a meal before bed because you can do this in your mid cycle). I recommend something light through the night like reading a book or socializing with your sims partner. So an example of how I do this is get my sim to go to bed at 8:30 and wake-up at 12:30 stay up until 2:30-3:30 and go back to sleep until (4:30am). This makes your cycle 5 hours instead of 6 and as arnold schwarzenegger once said how can you compete fairly with someone who is up longer than you. The other great trick to this is even if you use a energy 6 bed you can get by with 6 hours.

Needs & Emotion management

• Rather than waste time looking for the toilet or shower you can simply click on the need icon and your sim can go off and fulfil that need. This is a handy thing but depending on how you like to manage your sim you may find it still better to manually fulfil hunger as your sim will often get a quick meal and not satisfy the entire bar. This is entirely up to preference though as quick meals can save time throughout the day.
  
  
• Speaking of saving time. I recommend that unless your sim is a chef they should always cook 8 serving meals. Why? Because it means your sim won't have to waste time cooking later on in life. This is something we all do to save time in real life but I'm surprised at how many simmers still prefer to make single serving meals. Unless you're broke their is no excuse in my honest opinion!
  
  
• Get into the habit of greeting your neighbours on the street, especially early on in the game when you have no friends. A lot of people find socializing is slower now and to speed this up drastically you should boost your sims confidence. Having a confident sim will mean that his interactions are more successful and impact the friend bar. This can be achieved easiest by checking self out in the mirror. Likewise if you wish to have your sim gain a lover which is now separate you should hop that sim into a steamy shower to get them into a flirty mood. Remember that these two bars are separate now so you don't need to be friends with someone to be successful with flirty interactions. A lot comes down to EMOTIONS :lovestruc
  
  
• Many people don't realise how awesome the coffee and tea machines are now. They allow you to influence your mood to any career mindset you require so it's a good idea to have one in the morning before work. Whether you needs focus or confidence or inspiration this item has you covered. The two most important items a starter house should grab is a decent bed and coffee/tea machine in my opinion. Make sure you choose the right one to match your career choice.

Work and Skill Building

• It is very important that you attend work in the best mood obtainable as was the case in the past titles. However you must now try extra hard to get your sim into the right emotion mindset to maximize their work performance. I won't go into this in great detail but entertainers require inspiration and tech guru's require focused (I think?). Having certain traits such as genius (focus) and creative (inspired) will give you a leg up so that's something to keep in mind.
  
  
• Skill building can be increased faster based on emotion too. If your sim is angry don't waste his emotion by calming him down in the mirror. Send him off to the gym to work it off. If your sim is very inspired send him immediately to an easel or guitar to build his creative skills. It's not rocket science to work this out though having a focused genius will certainly help build that career/skill.

Satisfaction Points

• Personally I am not a fan of some of these satisfaction bonuses as they are so OP (overpowered) and not particularly challenging to obtain. However if you wish to get the most out of your life the no brainer is Never Weary. This OP bonus allows you to never sleep again. I hate it as this is just stupid and will take all the fun out of your game. I hope Maxis considers dropping this to what it was in TS3 and decreasing sleep duration to 3-4 hours instead. I mean if I wanted to have a supersim I would just turn on testingcheatsenabled and make needs static. However it probably has it's fans so I'll advise that rather than waste any SP points just save up immediately for Never Weary (which won't take you that long anyway)

Nice!


Yeah, I noticed that, but they autonomously leave "their" tablet laying around elsewhere instead of remembering to take it to the john; have to go on a scavanger hunt to find it. Hate that, hope that can be changed. [edit:] I mean, personally, I usually either don't notice their need until they're on the toilet, or I just don't want to bother finding a tablet first.


Although, we should recognize that your sims may not need any social, at which times you're wasting time if you allow them to converse while eating. Personally, my sims regularly get low on hunger. They rarely (I only remember once) get low on social. To wit, I often find myself micromanaging to cancel the conversation part of the multi-task when they're eating.

Thanks for the tips!

i am just finding it so tedious to keep up with all the needs. it wasn't like this in ts3. i remember Grant talking about how "the sims 3 is going to be less about peeing and more about doing other things". in ts4, the bladder and hunger needs decay fastest while sleeping. the energy motive isn't filled unless you get at least 10 hours. the fun motive decays relatively fast. and then while you're spending all of this time tending to these needs (eating, showering and even peeing can take forever) you have your fun motive depleting and your social motive super depleting.

I set lifespan to longest and just pop potions the day before they would age so I can do things in my own sweet time.

I agree with the fast decaying Needs. When I want to send a Sim out to do some collecting, I notice her hygiene is red. So I send her to the tub. Now she's clean, but she's hungry, so first a meal. After the meal, I notice her Fun is low, so watch some TV. Then her bladder is low and send her to the toilet. All done? No, now she's too tired! Aargh!!!
I really need a mod to slow down Needs.

Can these be altered with mods, I wonder? It sounds like a nice opportunity to change things about them.

Yeah, I'm missing the flowers that would replenish your needs a little at a time while you were in their radius from TS2.

i use potions well i have once and plan to more..we need a life span patch gawwwww!