Mail: Some simple rules and smart folders.

With a new job comes new responsibilities...
And with that I have found that a few of my tasks were getting lost in the shuffle. I'm a big fan of using rules in Apple's Mail.app which is similar to Microsoft Entourage which is simialr to Microsoft Outlook. The one thing that is common to all of these programs is that you are able to make rules. For those that don't know how to make a rule you should check out the help documentation within your specific program F1 for short. Over time I have developed different rules to organize my inbox. Also one advantage to working on a mac are smart folders. Here are my Favorite's that I use everyday.
1. Everybody who e-mails me regularly gets a folder, and a rule that sends all incoming mail from them into their specific folder. I had tried doing this on a project basis at first, but it quickly became disorganized and cluttered.

2. Subfolders: I usually try to categorize: Friends, Work, Newsletters, etc. and again a rule is set for each person, newsletter, company, etc.

3. Smart folder #1: Today's Mail: I like the idea of having a folder that has everything that I've looked at in the last couple days. So I created a Smart Folder that contains just that:
Any of the following conditions:
Date Received is in the last 2 days. (Covers weekends, for work
Date Last Viewed is today (If I looked at it in the last 24 hrs, it was probably important enough to be in this folder)
Message is Unread (This one should be self explanatory but needed to be added)

4. I also have a Flagged smart mailbox that contains any message that is flagged. (I usually flag messages if they are important or need to be responded to)

5. With my new job I have been getting so many emails that It's been difficult to keep track. So I created a new rule. I call it the Please respond rule:
Any Conditions are met:
If the message content contains any of the following phrases: Let me know, lmk, please respond, please, what is, when do.
Mark As Flagged

I wasn't sure how well this last one would work, but it came out pretty well, granted their is some overlap, but it's pretty simple to unflag an item, and I'm finally starting to get used to unflagging now. Well with that said, I hope you find these useful, let me know if you have any other ideas or suggestions.