There's a lot of great information out there already, so I won't dip into all of it too much. I'll talk more about what I've tried and what I'm doing.
TOOLS.
First of all, there are lots of great tools. Personally I adore backloggery.com but I also use howlongtobeat.com, darkadia.com as well as some spreadsheets here and there.
Backloggery is great in that there isn't a database you're required to use, so you can enter pretty much anything and organize in your own way if you need to make some slight adjustments here and there. The downside is you don't get metdata sorting and it's by no means quick to enter a large backlog. Still, the site is charming and personally I find it the most useful. It's the "true" copy of my backlog.
How Long To Beat is fantastic as well, but I previously had a lot of problems with the speed of the site. It seemed that with a large backlog such as mine was causing it to chug. Every single operation took a few seconds or more to complete, so setting everything up was a lengthy undertaking. There's a lot of useful data though like release dates for games, but it's main feature is user-polled estimates for completion time and the ability to sort your backlog using it.
Darkadia - I love this one. Entry is fast and it has a decent amount of sorting options. The view is also spectacular since you can scroll through your collection viewing the game's cover art. Unfortunately, a few games seem to consistently fail to load their art for me. Not sure why. The biggest thing of note here is that it uses Giantbomb's database. It's great in that it has a lot of information, but I've still run across plenty of games that aren't in there yet. You can make a Giantbomb account yourself and add a game, but it requires a little effort to look up the information you need to submit for every game. Giantbomb also seeks to be a unique wiki, so NO copy/paste from other sites. You have to write about the game in your own words. Once you've finished that, you have to wait a few days for your submission to be approved. If there was even a minor problem it'll be rejected and you'll have to do the submit / wait cycle again. Some more uncommon platforms they don't support too. For example they wouldn't let me add Audiosurf for Zune HD since they don't allow the Zune platform.
I can see how it benefits everyone overall, but it is extra work. Instead of being someone trying to organize your backlog now your also writing short wiki stubs just to add a game to a list. That being said, Darkadia is my favorite way to browse. You can sort, look at artwork and just quickly zip through everything.
Spreadsheets - I use this whenever there's something somewhat temporary I need to keep track of. For example if there's a game on Darkadia I submitted to the wiki but have to keep checking back for its approval before adding to my backlog - I add an entry on a spreadsheet. Otherwise I use them to keep track of the games I want to buy (along with a rating for how much I want it 1-5) and the pre-orders I definitely want to place, have placed, and am waiting on (as well as whether they're paid for up front or will be charged on release, etc).
USAGE.
How do I use these tools together?
Backloggery is the master list. Since I can add whatever I want immediately without waiting on database approvals it's my go-to if I want to look something up about my collection / backlog.
HowLongToBeat I use just to look up game duration for a few games I'm interested in. That's about it now.
I used to have my whole backlog there, but small annoyances changed my mind. The website was slow. If a game wasn't in the database I could add it to my backlog anyway without any metadata and if another person added the same game then the admin would add metadata eventually. But any difference in game title wouldn't be counted as the same. For example if I added Senran Kagura: Estival Versus to my backlog as a new entry, then two other people came and added "Senran Kagura Estival Versus" (no colon). Then metadata would we added for their entry and I'd never know about it. I'd just be stuck with a metadata-less entry in my list unless I searched the game again on a whim and noticed. It's a little messy.
Darkadia Here I mostly sort by ratings and release date. I took the time to go through and click in a rating for every single game in my backlog. I really suggest this if you can find the time. Just rate the game based on however excited you feel about playing it.
A while back I also did an effort to try every game in my backlog for anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour. Just to see if you actually want to play that game. It was incredibly satisfying. I opened a lot of games and limited editions I had sitting around, paged through some art books, and sampled a lot of games. Most were about what I expected, but there were plenty of surprises in all directions. There were some games I loved more than I thought I would, and some I hated immediately contrary to my expectation at purchase time. Any time I do something like this I update the rating in Darkadia if I think it's changed.
In the past I tried a few simple rules too. Beat your backlog by playing games in order of:
Release Date: Newest First - Play the newest and shiniest first. It's fun, but if your backlog is growing you'll never get to that retro gem you have your eye on
Release Date: Oldest First - Play through time! Experience gaming improvements as they happened. This was a really cool idea, but it makes you feel like buying a brand new game that was just released is pointless. Also old games are difficult, so it's a little frustrating.
Length: Longest First - Get the games you need to chew on a bit out of the way and enjoy building momentum to beat more games faster and faster as you progress. This was just exhausting. No one really wants to play 150+ hour games back to back.
Length: Shortest First - Feels great at first, but each one is slowly becoming a greater undertaking than the last so it starts to feel less and less rewarding.
Random: This just didn't work for me. I couldn't trust myself to only push backloggery's fortune cookie button once. I'd spend a long time opening fortune cookies.
Rating/Metacritic: Playing a game based on how well received it is. In theory it sounds okay, but the only thing it taught me is that I don't agree with anyone. A lot of my favorites were stuck in the midrange and games I hated were at the top. I played Oblivion based on this system of selection and I hated every minute of it. Probably my least favorite game I ever played.
I eventually just decided to mash a lot of these together into one system.
Basically I would have 8 slots on my backloggery: NEW, RANDOM, OLD, LONG, A->Z, Z->A, LOWEST RATING, HIGHEST RATING
This was the system I had the most success with. The variety kept me going and updating the 8 slots with new games once I finished all 8 was a lot of fun.
CURRENT METHOD.
Something about the highest and lowest rating slots was bothering me still though. I didn't like how mismatched I was from metacritic and community ratings. When I thought "Why not just play the game I personally rated the highest / lowest instead?" is when the lightbulb finally went off. Of course we should be playing the games we want to play first. Anything else is a bit silly.
This was around the time I went and have everything in Darkadia a personal rating. Now I mix a lot of these experiences together. My current method is as follows:
-Every game has a personal rating in Darkadia
-Sort uncompleted games by personal rating
-Everything with a 5 star rating is the selection pool
-Enter selection pool into HowLongToBeat (to easily view release dates, community rating, and game length)
-Take the 8 slots (NEW, RANDOM, OLD, LONG, A->Z, Z->A, LOWEST, HIGHEST) and apply them to this pool. For example, don't pick the absolute newest game for NEW. Pick the newest game you have that you've also rated 5 stars. Use HowLongToBeat's backlog feature to sort the list and make picks. Sort it by release date, sort is alphabetically, sort by duration, sort by rating, etc)
-That's it! Play through the slots, pick 8 more games until all 5 stars are gone, then move to 4.5 stars and so on.
I'd advise you to be kind of picky with your rating. Ignore reviews when rating a game yourself. Give it YOUR rating, not someone else's. Don't rate it high just because it was hyped when it came out, rate it high because you're hyped to play it. Don't be afraid to rate a well reviewed game low because it doesn't seem like much fun right now. Don't be afraid to down-rate a game after you've played it a bit either. If suddenly the game for your current slot isn't fun anymore, just rate it lower and move on.
I imagine that for my backlog this might be pretty cumbersome when I finally reach the 3's or so, so I may need to come up with something then but it'll take me a while to get down that far.
If I were to ever reach the 1.5-2 range I'd probably only have games without much to offer me. Once I got here I'd consider just removing these games entirely and not even treating them as part of a backlog anymore. This would be a good time to sample the games, re-rate, and probably sell off a few things.
KEEPING IT DOWN.
This makes selection fun and helps you play the games you want to play most first, but if you're still buying a lot of games your backlog will still grow. Again, maybe that's not a problem. If you don't mind, then just don't worry about it. It's a personal goal for me though, so this is how I'm working on it a bit.
This isn't a punishment. If there are some game franchises or developers I love everything about, then it doesn't make a lot of sense to not allow myself those titles. If it's a game I'm especially interested in then it doesn't need any special rules. I'm getting the new Hyperdimension Neptunia game when it comes out regardless of how many games I've beaten recently. Same for Hatsune Miku games, Senran Kagura, something especially fanservicey like Dead or Alive Xtreme 3, etc. I may also not count games I purchase with alternate methods (credit card rewards, bing reward gift cards, etc) but I'm not completely decided yet.
This is where I suggest making a wishlist in addition to a backlog. I just used a spreadsheet for mine. What you use isn't important, but I think there's a lot of value in giving these games a rating. I like the spreadsheet because I can be very granular with the ratings. I still go 1-5, but not in .5 increments like on Darkadia. I have 3.1's and 4.7's
The purpose of this is to prioritize what games you want in addition to what games you want to play. I haven't come up with an exact figure yet, but I'd like to buy 1 game from my wishlist every time I scratch 4-8 off my backlog. I'll probably go with 8 since I'm allowing myself exceptions for games that especially appeal to me already, but it's not set in stone yet. When I beat 8 games, I can pick a top-rated game from my wishlist.
Another thing I considered that could work is to not buy any new games until all 5 stars games are completed, then you can buy any 5 star game from your wishlist until they're all gone and beaten, then move down to 4.5 - With a large backlog and wishlist this didn't really feel like I'd ever be buying new games from my list though, so I opted to space it out instead as I described above.
FINAL TIPS.
#1 Is ALWAYS to have fun. If you need a break, take one. If you want to break your rules, do it. Leisure time is precious, so do what feels like fun, not like work.
This may not apply to you, but I have no problem selecting the easiest difficulty or using a cheat for a difficult retro game. There are some games I'd never beat otherwise. If you get most of your enjoyment out of a challenging game then this probably isn't a great tip for you, but I'm much more the type of person that would grind to overlevel for a boss and crush them or just YouTube the ending of a game if the game design is too annoying to get there myself.
Treat a backlog more like things you want to play rather than things you need to play. This relates a lot to always having fun, but if you try a game and suddenly realize you hate it: Strike it off. Don't even count it anymore. It's up to you if you want to leave it listed on a site like Backloggery (I do, mostly just to still be able to keep track of it for my collection) but mentally just tell yourself it's fine if you never finish that game you hate.
THE END
That's it!
If I ever feel stressed about my backlog I just remind myself that my childhood self would think I succeeded at being an adult if one of my problems is "Lots of video games to play". It's a good problem, but sometimes prioritizing, organizing, and planning a backlog can be fun too.
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