TODO lists certainly can work. I use 2 levels of lists, a long-term list and daily lists. If a daily item isn't finished in a day I copy it into the next day's log entry at the end of the day. I've been doing it like this for around 7 or 8 years now. I combine this with my daily log (vim text file) to track what I've done and what I should be doing.

I don't use the lists to tell me exactly how to do things, but as a way to track what I to be looking at next. I also have status symbols for items. ! means important, P for when a patch has been sent for review but not pushed upstream and X for complete .