When I was a young lass, I had my first brush with the concept of “time management.” My mom took me to a Franklin Covey seminar, got me a smart binder in leatherette, and a important training in the principles of prioritization was mine. I was kind of amazed at how easy it was to manage time when you broke it down into smaller chunks.

Since then I’ve been a little obsessed with efficiency. I am typically juggling one thousand projects and I hate it when anything falls through the cracks and I miss some key task. In lieu of what happens in that classic Twilight Zone episode where a guy gets locked in a bank vault during a nuclear apocalypse, I’m always looking for crafty ways to squeeze a few more tasks out of an action-packed day.

I hope to have a video up soon to explain how I use these things in greater depth, but here are some things that I’ve tried in the past three months:

• Boomerang: an inbox minimizing tool.
• Sean Malarkey’s get massive amounts of sh*t done system: a dead simple framework for prioritizing
• Write or die: a surprisingly effective “gamification” of the writing process
• Action Method: a framework for to-dos that forces you to focus
• Streaks: a simple iPhone app that rewards you for habit-making
• Outsourcing: Read about my experience with Task Rabbit

How do you stay on top of your to-do list?