As a teenager, I heard someone say "never let a piece of paper cross your desk twice" and took it to heart. Took a while to make it a habit, but now I can apply it to most meetings and emails -- I read, action then archive right there. So I hardly maintain a todo list of any sort. I make a list in the morning and finish/scratch off its items by the evening. Doing that daily, my mind is always refreshed about recurring or long term tasks. It seems to work for me.
The other thing I found useful is that procrastination, or the getting-started-barrier is proportional to size/complexity of task. I keep breaking the task down to smaller units until I get to something that doesn't fill me with loathing when I think of it. And then I do it. That effectively starts the task.