A lot of Picklists in our Org are sorted in the order in which a give process is completed. Is there a way to use formulas based on the sort order of a given picklist. I know this meta-data is available because if you sort by a non-alphabetical sorted picklist in a list view, it gives results in the defined order of the picklist values. So is there any way in a Validation Rule for example where you can have it equal true if you go past some picklist value OR have yet to reach a picklist value without explicitly covering all pick values before or after the picklist value in question. I will give a brief example below.

I have a date field: Date_Field_c
I have a Picklist field: Picklist_Field_c 
which has values: "Stage 1", Stage 2", "Stage 3", "Stage 4", "Stage 5"
with Stage 1, being first and Stage 5 being last in the defined sort order. 

I want the date field to be populated for Stages 3, 4, and 5.

Instead of writing a formula like:
AND(ISBLANK(Date_Field_c),
    OR(
       ISPICKVAL(Picklist_Field_c,"Stage 3"),
       ISPICKVAL(Picklist_Field_c,"Stage 4"),
       ISPICKVAL(Picklist_Field_c,"Stage 5")
    )
)

OR a formula like: 
AND(ISBLANK(Date_Field_c),
       NOT(ISPICKVAL(Picklist_Field_c,"Stage 1")),
       NOT(ISPICKVAL(Picklist_Field_c,"Stage 2"))
)

I would prefer to write something like:
AND(ISBLANK(Date_Field_c),Picklist_Field_c>ISPICKVAL(Picklist_Field_c,"Stage 2")

We have a lot of picklists with a large number of values. Otherwise, this would not be a big deal to write the other 2 ways, but I can think of several use cases where something like I am looking for would be handy. I understand there be some additional requirement to define the record type since the sort order is defined at the record type level. But I could just add $RecordType.DeveloperName = "Record Type X" to account for that.