I usually go from teenager onwards, it allows you to get skills in play early, if you are a writer, you get an immediate bump in income after saving those books and reach a certain level in writing to sell the books to a publisher.
on occasion i might go from a toddler and get all skills to 3 and gain a happiness trait from it, advance as many skills as possible in child phase, including charisma and logic, make sure school grades are A with the tick. then do the same again in teenager and write books. This game has a habit of getting your characters interacting with each other when in the same room, it will slow down progress considerably. so i usually make the effort to create a seperate room that only your sim can access or move the teenager out and start up elsewhere.