Gmail Priority Inbox

If you use Gmail (why wouldn't you?), you probably know about the Priority Inbox beta feature.  It separates your inbox into "Important" messages and "Everything Else."  Here is how that system has contributed to my prioritization so far:

I sign on to Gmail.  I look at the list of email.  On the top, there are the "important" messages -- meeting notes, schoolwork, club responsibilities, work-related things.  On the bottom, there are newsletters from H&M, Delia's, National Geographic, and concert alerts from Ticketmaster.  Now... naturally I don't want to do work just yet, because I don't have to, lalala...  So I sort through all of the "Everything Else" messages, click on all of their links, blithely subject myself to fun information and advertisement, then come back to my inbox.  All that's left is work.  I obviously have not started.

Whereas if everything were mixed, I would have come across both work and non-work, and I'd be halfway through work by now.  Dang it.

Categorization does not mean prioritization.  Only if I take advantage of categorization in the right way!