Entering a wide date range is inconvenient

Some of our tasks have custom date fields with dates that go back to the 1990s. I'd like to be able to filter a task list by one of these fields, narrowing the list to tasks for which this field falls within the year 1995. The current date entry system for filtering these tasks requires me to click the left arrow icon once for each month between the current date and January 1995 -- quite a pain. A more convenient method of entering a date, such as a way to type a year (or even a whole date) would be very helpful.

That's 317 clicks, in case you're keeping score.