BOX — A way to manage the Mountain Lion Inbox

This method involves creating one ordinary mailbox, called Hold, in the IMAP account of your choice, and a smart mailbox. The smart mailbox, called “Box” contains messages matching “any” of the following conditions: “Message is Unread”; “Message Has Flag Red/Orange/Yellow”; or “Message is in Mailbox “Inbox”. Do not include either Trash or Sent. Drag both Hold and Box to the bookmark bar. In View>Message Attributes, make sure that “Flags”, “Mailbox”, and “Date Received” are selected. Above the message list display, select “Sort by Flags ▾” and “Ascending”.

At this point, instead of viewing your Inbox, you should view Box. You will see unread messages and Inbox messages at the top, followed by all red-flag messages, then orange-flag messages, then yellow-flag messages. Within each level, you'll get the same default sorting by priority and date, oldest first. Note that messages flagged at a lower priority (Green-Grey) can be viewed via the standard Flagged bookmark (this bookmark should also be set up to sort by Flags  ▾, ascending). Normally, all messages in Hold will be flagged, but the Hold bookmark can be selected to see all current contents, flagged or not.

In addition to this, you should drag the root of your current mailbox archive hierarchy to the bookmark bar (in my case, this is currently named y2012). This should allow you to keep the mailboxes sidebar hidden most of the time.

When a message arrives, it will be at the top of the column. Here is a suggested sequence for dealing with a message in your Inbox.

• Delete it if you can, possibly after jotting down a quick reply (the rule is, less than two minutes).
• If you need to act on it, but it will take longer than two minutes, set a flag according to its priority. Then...
• If you're not sure where or whether you want to save it after you've dealt with it, drag it onto the Hold bookmark.
• If you already know where to save it, drag it onto your archive bookmark and down to the appropriate mailbox.

Once your Inbox has been cleared, then at your leisure, you can deal with your flagged messages. When you have finally dealt with one, set its flag to “None”. If the message is located in Hold, just delete it (or you can decide to archive it).

If you need to deal with a message on a certain date, drag it to iCal on that day, and consider setting an alert. If you tend not to look at iCal regularly, I recommend a utility called EmailMyCal from the App store: it can email you your agenda, including a mention of pending email, each day. You will also receive (OS/X ≥ Mountain Lion) alerts about that message, depending on your configuration.

OK, that's the system. You really need to keep unread/Inbox messages low, or you won't see the flagged messages.