[Brian]

While you're learning the ropes, I'd set #1 up as a "Weekly review" project which contained the things you want to do. Make the project (but not the actions) repeat once a week. Once you complete a given review, the next one will be automatically completed.

A similar approach could be set up for the daily processing/planning you mention in #3, but I suspect once you get up and running, you'll be able to retire that one. No need for the overhead of checking those items off once you're in the habit of doing it every day.

As for identifying your most important tasks, have you tried flagging items? Once you have the items you want to knock out identified, you can just use the "Flagged" item in the sidebar to show and complete them. (To flag an item, tap it to bring up the editor - the button in the lower left of the Info tab is what you're looking for.)