Take a look at this screenshot and then read my rationale
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/881090/gmail_email.png

Your setup is exactly what I used to do, however I found it a bit annoying and tedious to constantly be dealing with emails that really were only taking up my time (such as things that could be read later or at the end of the day – newsletters, PayPal payment reports etc). Not too long ago a came upon a blog post that explained a great way to use the “multiple inbox” feature in Gmail.

Now, my e-mail is automatically labeled either as “Immediate Action”, which is separated into yellow and red labels depending on how urgent something is (invoices that need to be paid would be an example of something that would be labeled yellow, and contact form submissions on my site would be something that gets labeled red). Below this inbox are any conversion emails I have with actual people. Sometimes upon arrival into my inbox they are also labeled with yellow or red (I have some email addresses such as that of my hosting provider to be labeled with red). All of these emails are not marked as read until I open them and once I’ve opened them I click on the “star it” button to either mark as completed (green check), to-do (blue “I”, which then gets moved to the to-do inbox below) or purple star (which means read later – this could be interesting newsletters that I just didn’t have a chance to read at the moment and will wait until the end of the day to read). Now, the best feature I like about marking conversations as completed (green check) is I have the “conversations inbox” filter out any conversions that are all checked, meaning I’ve read and replied. Now that conversions are in the final “completed inbox” (at the bottom of the image preview), I can reference them at any time (I keep the last 50 completed emails/tasks visible, however I can click view all at any time and then further define the search if needed). If that person should happen to reply, their email obviously won’t be marked with the green check yet so it will come back up into the conversation inbox all on its own.

The other thing I do to keep my e-mail organized is sort e-mails which I usually need to read at the end of the day or at least within 48 hours to folders visible in the left pain of Gmail.

I deal with about 50 e-mails per day and this method has by far saved me the most amount of time and kept me from having to constantly read e-mail as it’s sorted into what needs to be read now, later, and within 48 hours. Quickly glancing at the inbox to see no new mail is way easier and way less distraction.

1. I check email much more often than you do. Probably every 5 minutes at the longest.
2. I auto-file daily or weekly reports I get from scripts, people, etc. This makes it a lot easier to go back through history for specific things I want to look for because I have a good mind map for what’s in there and what I need, which I don’t always have with my general email.

I delete very little. Just spam mostly. Everything else goes into my gigantic Archive folder. I’m on the 2nd one since the first one just got too big and slow. I’m about due for #3 since my #2 Archive is approaching 25,000 emails.

Our fundamental systems and email philosophies are identical though, and it was liberating to get to that point. I miss almost nothing now.