About a year ago, I started transitioning all my mail to Google GMail, an excellent email solution (and certainly better than Outlook). When using GMail, I like to filter the inbox so I only see my most important emails — that is, those emails which are unread or starred. The simple way to do this is to enter the following as search terms:
is:starred || is:unread
The search results will show all messages which are starred OR unread. Perfect for looking at only those items in your inbox which need your attention.