I always wind up with a few branches that I just give up on. They will just sit there on the trimming table for weeks until I finally get around to finishing it up, sometimes.
My old method was meticulous. Now I just trim off the extra crap fast and easy. I'll leave a pretty significant amount of leaf on the buds because it's such a hassle trimming it from the stem. When I'm breaking up my weed to smoke is when I do the final "trim" and remove the remaining leaf leaving nothing but calyx to smoke. Then I jar the trim I remove like this for hash making later on.
Next time I trim more than a few ounces I'm going to get myself a full on comfy setup with like a breakfast and bed tray to trim on and a massaging chair from Sharper Image to sit in. Trimming gets to my back after a few hours of leaning forward over a trim table.