Lifestyles: how's your experience?

I've turned them off as well. My Sims always get workaholic one which basically means they are tense all the time when they aren't that work and it's so hard to override that with a different emotion. So they can't work on their skills because they are too tense. I got the carefree trait but it doesn't seem to work with the lifestyles? So as much as I enjoy the idea of it, it's not as fun in reality.