New INBOX:0 Strategy
For the last month or so I've been able to sit myself at INBOX:0 quite consistently and have been experimenting with various ways of keeping it that way - I think I've got a decent working setup now which takes advantage of a change in GMail's URL handling (I believe it always worked, only now the search urls are exposed to the browser: https://mail.google.com/a/DOMAIN/#search/is%3Aunread).
So I now have Firefox configured to open 4 GMail tabs on start up with the following searches:
- to:me in:inbox is:unread
- to:me is:unread
- in:inbox is:unread
- is:unread
The four searches give me easy access to direct personal email, personal email that's been filed away for less importance, anything else unread in the INBOX, and finally - anything anywhere that's unread. It works like a 4-step program, and so far seems to work quite well.