With much talk on the interwebs about how to stay atop the mountain of messages clogging our inboxes — Inbox zero, email bankruptcy, etc — it’s good to see Google taking some proactive steps towards making that most arduous of tasks a bit more manageable. Enter Gmail Priority Inbox:

I’ve been using a system somewhat similar to this using the Google Labs feature Multiple Inboxes and having a second inbox configured to display starred messages, but Google’s solution sounds simpler and more effective.  I’ve not had and opportunity to try out this functionality yet, but I’m eager to see if it makes a noticeable difference in my email productivity.