What are the advantages of napping

The Sims 3 is notorious for high CPU and resource usage, especially when you get multiple households and things going. Try opening up the task manage (ctrl+shift+esc) while playing and take a look at the CPU and Memory percentages. If they are pegged at 100% or close to it, that may be the problem.

The game does try to "optimize" by instead of the entire game chugging, only certain processes of it do, like sim behavior and the background world simulation (which is why everyone is tired). Something to try is lower the various settings, or removing households you don't really care about so the background simulation doesn't have to work as hard(backup your save in case this doesn't work!).

Self-employed writers get the same benefits as all the other self-employment options:

Occasional trophies, accolades and bonus checks.

For an Ambitious sim, it also tends to provide a steady trickle of promotions, which is good.