Anyone have any nice articles with tips on how to generally optimize OS X? Esp to better handle this paging/memory management problem that the OP is talking abo

Anyone have any nice articles with tips on how to generally optimize OS X? Esp to better handle this paging/memory management problem that the OP is talking about. I have a MBP with 4GB RAM and leave programs open all the time. After a few days, it feels very sluggish. Aside from double my memory and changing my habits (i.e. shutting down every night), how do I fix this?