Making todo lists and sticking to them require too much discipline. In my professional life I keep todo lists, reminders etc. But in my personal life I'm a lazy lazy person.
I can't seem to find a solution to this.
It's nice crossing things off, it also never gets out of control.
Of all the things I tried in my personal life to get more things done, this is the one that's generally worked. I still go through phases of not doing it but it's really easy to start doing it again as the stack is always on my desk.
The other thing that works very effectively for me, much like this article says, is occasionally when feeling overwhelmed I write down everything that's stressing me out in a temporary text editor (an unsaved notepad++ note, which remains between computer restarts). I include things like "I'm pissed off with Bob because he did X" or "I'm worried about client Y not being able to pay their bill" or "I feel like I'm not putting enough time into doing Z".
I almost immediately stop stressing about it, and generally end up closing the unsaved note after a week or two, usually without reading it again. When I do, most of the stuff I was worrying about turned out fine.