Perspectives let you filter out all the crap that's not relevant. The "Perspectives" menu bar is the main place to go. You can build your own using the View Bar (View > Show View Bar or shift-cmd-V), then Perspectives > Save Window As. There are some good tutorials to figure out Perspectives. I started with David Sparks's MPU screencasts
- Project-based perspective
- Shows only projects that have "available" tasks
- Hides projects that a future-dated, repeating, etc