I usually play 1-2 main households that I actually control. I go in knowing the story I'm going to be playing and set everything up for it.
Whenever I play without an actually story idea, I just stare at my sims for a really long time and leave to go do something else because I just get lost. But I try to do as much as possible from as many packs that would benefit/make sense to the story.
So maybe think about what type of story you'd like to do and create sims based on that and give them all different hobbies and make them different enough that you get a bit of everything.
Like, in the 2 households I'm playing now, some are farmers, there's a lawyer, a gold-digging wife, a doctor, and archeologist who adventures the world, a soldier, a vet, a chef, and a teacher. And each one has different hobbies so I got a lot of bases covered in this playthrough.
I hope some of that helps!
