When I'm knocking off tasks, it always helps me to hide the tasks that I cannot work on at the moment. That way, I only see a short list and there's nothing blocking me from going through them top to bottom.
To do that, and to make sure I remember them when their time has come, my Smart Lists include this:

(not tag:wait or due:never or dueBefore:tomorrow)

That way, I can simply tag future tasks with 'wait' and assign them a due date for when I want to be reminded of them. On that day, they automatically show up again.
I do something similar for repeating tasks, but I don't want to tag them as 'wait' every time. So instead, I hide every repeating task until their due date.

(not (tag:wait or isRepeating:true) or due:never or dueBefore:tomorrow)

Nice and short, and I can focus on the things I can do today.