If a workflow consists of three steps (acquiriing & sorting; finishing; archiving & logging), this article mostly covers the middle step.

Pshop/Bridge and Lightroom/Aperture overlap quite a bit; the latter two are better for huge batches, like events, when shots aren't finished individually.

For the third step, catalog software might be overkill for a one-man shop. Deeper search engines like Spotlight make images quick to find no matter where they are if they've been keyed right.

What's missing is attention to the crucial first step -- acquiring, editing, naming, sorting. All programs mentioned are lousy at this, very slow and cumbersome.

The fastest workflow for me, by far, is to handle first step with PhotoMechanic. No matter what you throw at it, PM lets you see images in real time. Then I send the job to Pshop/Bridge or sometimes Lightroom -- and walk away for a real long time while those programs chew and chew and chew.