So I leave my desk for a couple of hours, get 10 min to process the 30 new emails that have arrived before next meeting....sound familiar?

This is the greatest tip I have found for outlook and will usually ensure your must read email is at the top of your inbox, and makes scanning the rest of the email very very easy.

Step 1. Write down the 10 or so people who's email you really need to see quickly in order to create greatest value from your limited time i.e. your boss, his/her boss, key customers (internal/external), your significant other half etc.

Step 2. Create Rule in Outlook to mark messages from these people as high importance. Tools-rules and Alerts Start rule from blank and create rule that checks messages as they arrive to see if they are from your important list as defined above. Have the rule set these messages to 'High Importance'

Step 3. Change your outlook view to arrange by importance and show in groups (View menu). In this way email from these people will always be at the top of your inbox date sorted in there own group. All other email will be date sorted in a second group below. Note: to ensure groups are alway expanded goto View-Arrange by-custom-Group by then choose Expand/collapse-all expanded

Advanced: You can fine tune your rule to exclude meeting acceptance messages and other catagories of replies/emails from your 10 VIP's as required.