Practice Makes Perfect buffs too powerful

I agree, the 24-hour buff is just too long. 3-5 hours would be plenty. The only way to overcome the focused mood is to take reward trait potions which give you +100 to whatever emotion you want. However, they wear off in 3 hours.  The other way I've found is to be a spellcaster and take a potion of emotional stability. There might be a wellness way of doing it too, but I've forgotten exactly what the perks of those aspirations are. 

EDIT: Ok, so it seems it does stop as long as you haven't raised any skills for a certain amount of time. (Maybe a full 24 to 48 hours of no skill gains.. not sure.)  Of course, unless you're playing an occult or long-lived sim, you most likely won't have gotten to level 10 of all the basic skills that you just naturally get from playing the game.