In-context editing will make your life so much simpler, no matter how comfortable you are with technology you'll never know how you lived without it before. That being said, there are some advanced things that need to happen on websites that have nothing to do with a specific page. If you're looking to manage users, view reporting data, add themes or functionality, tweak sitewide settings, etc - you want to use the Dashboard and do it from there. There's a link to your Dashboard in the upper right of your in-context editing toolbar. This will open the dashboard pane, which you can use to navigate to a subsection of the dashboard quickly.
To learn more about the dashboard visit the Editor's Guide for the Dashboard.