I was like you. I thought that tabs were useless. Now I use tabs. The workflow is to open 3 or 4 tabs, not more. For example, first tab rails app, second tab a gem used by the app, third tab my vimrc (I need to tweak constantly), fourth tab my todo list.
Here you find my comment about it with a screenshot
http://syskall.com/my-biggest-vim-productivity-boost/#commen...
I edit a lot of markdown documents with MacVim, because I use Gollum as personal wiki.
I would like to see the page I'm editing rendered without leaving MacVim or committing it.
Reloadlive does this.
http://albertomiorin.com/blog/2013/03/25/the-zen-of-wiki-wit...
https://github.com/amiorin
https://twitter.com/amiorin