I ended up placing a bench near the leave-for-work point, otherwise my sims would spoil their lovely perfect-for-work mood by going to sit in the Focused Room to drink a potion.
Now their action queue is: Sit, drink potion, sit, drink potion, sit, meditate
I'll delete actions as needed but I'm less frequently watching my sims spending 30 minutes to walk to the back of the house after their pre-work massage.
On another note, I'd noticed that even before the patch, my sims and their maids always sit down to pick up each dirty dish while cleaning up. Just pick up the plate already!
I'm not sure if the lag in your action queue is patch-related. In a multi-generation game, I start seeing the lag after the household has begun to hoard too much.
This is no doubt old news to you, but streamlining personal and household inventories does wonders for lag. My tournament files are never laggy.
Or did you never experience lag until post-patch?