I feel kind of weird winning this event, since Tixxis got a better score. Tixxis, you just gotta get your score in a little earlier
I'm looking forward to finding out what you did that I didn't do. At any rate, here's what I did do.
I started off with two Sims having identical traits: loves the outdoors, ambitious, and geek. Geek was pretty arbitarary, and I now feel like there are better traits I could have picked. Loves the outdoors is a staple if you want to set up your house outdoors, since the +2 happy it gives when your Sims are outdoors ir very helpful. Picking ambitious seemed appropriate for the challenge. It gave them many wishes to get promotions, and great moodlets when they did. I'm not sure if it helps them get promoted faster. I hope it did, but the description of ambitious doesn't mention this ability, and I didn't notice the bar moving any faster because of it.
I figured that it was important to make it so that they both could boost their performance as many ways as possible, as soon as possible. My favorite way of boosting career performance outside the job is make connections:[job title]. This ability is gained by completing the computer whiz aspiration. Along the way, they also gain the ability to hack work performance. With level ten charisma, they gain the ability to ask for a bonus. This also raises their career performance, but can only be used every other day. The make connections one is my favorite because it works 100% of the time, and can be used every day. Hack work performance is very unrealiable, only working about half the time, and is also time consuming.
I decided to have them reach level ten charisma before they got a job, and get never weary and the connections reward in the process. The first thing I had them do was complete the friend of the world aspiration. Once they got 4000 whim points, they bought never weary. Once they got another 3000 points, they bought connections. I would raise friendship levels quickly using quick interactions. Some of my favorites are heartfelt compliment, get to know, and brighten day. I would normally have them socialize while in a happy or very happy mood, but would occasionally use a confident mood to benefit from a different set of whims and the relationship boost confidence gives. I also made sure to ask for a lot of loans, which was a great help for their money situation. It gave them the ability to buy the best bed and bathtub.
After joining and quitting a few careers that they would never do in order to get the career rewards and bonuses, the next step was having them both join the tech guru career, in order to gain the ability to make connections and hack work performance. After this, one of them joined the culinary career and did the chef branch, while the other one joined the writer career and did the journalism branch. I chose these careers for a couple of reasons each. The ideal mood for both careers is inspired, which is my favorite ideal mood. I was able to get them inspired for 8 hours before work by bowing for inspiration on the violin. It took a while, but the 8 hour buff was worth it. Also, I wanted to be sure my Sim made it all the way through the culinary career chef branch, since it gives by far the most reward objects of any career. In addition, for some reason it was super easy to get promoted in culinary, and because of the time changes between the various shifts, many times when getting promoted in it a Sim can work two shifts without much break between them. I chose journalism because of its many work days, and ideal mood of inspired. It also had a good number of career rewards. The last careers I had them work on were painting, patron of the arts branch, and business, investor branch. I picked these for some of the same reasons as the previous set; painting had an ideal mood of inspired, and business had a lot of long work days. Both had many reward objects.
It took a lot of experimentation during practice runs to figure out how many outside of work performance boosts I needed at different career levels in order to get promoted in a single work day, and how I should answer the random career events that came up. I still didn't quite perfect these things, but would keep a close eye on their performance bar during work hours to see how much spare time they had after they reached promotion point in order to have an idea of how to handle the next level.
I had them make connections every day. I would have them ask for a bonus after this if it was a day that they could ask, and it would matter for their promotion. I only used hack work performance if it would be necessary for a promotion on their next shift, and they had already done everything else. When they had more than a day off, I could usually get away with just making connections. In order to increase my success with hacking work performance I made sure they were very focused, and added the IP spoofer upgrade to their computers as soon as I could manage. I tried a lot of other things to increase success, but nothing seemed to work. However, if they needed to hack in order to get a promotion, it was worth trying.
I made sure to get them in as good a mood as possible before work. Some of the happy buffs I gave them were high level impeccable quality gourmet food, a bath in the nicest tub, playing a modded game, using a toilet with a bidet, telling each other a deep secret, lending emotional support (earned from completing the soulmate aspiration), and listening to music. I also would have them look at art of the appropriate mood type right before work if possible, and reminisce. If they needed the focused mood I also had them ponder chess moves and browse simpedia. If they needed energized, I had them research exercise techniques and sometimes finish the last bit of run oolong tea. If they needed confident, I would have them psych themselves up in the mirror, and sometimes finish the last bit of earl grey tea. One thing I started doing partway through is having them eat first when beginning to get ready for work, but stop before the last bite. They would finish the last bite right before leaving so the happy buff would last as long as possible, since the food gave such a big mood boost.
As far as rewards, they got entrprenurial after connections, and then got night owl and morning Sim, stoves and grills master, followed by savant, carefree, steel bladder, antiseptic, hardly hungry, independent, and a bunch more that didn't matter much. Stoves and grills master I only got on one Sim.
I can't think of anything else worth mentioning, but feel free to ask if you have questions.
Edit: Added some clarification about hacking work performance and asking for a bonus.
