My 2009 organizing resolution is to finally get a handle on e-mail. I spend an hour or more each day dealing with messages that have little or nothing to do with me, and I need for e-mail to take a backseat to higher priority tasks.

One article I've found to be extremely helpful to me is "Ten Gmail labs features you should enable" by Lifehacker's new editor Adam Pash. It explains ways to make your Gmail account work best for you:

Tasks. Google has taken a lot of guff for not creating a to-do list app to round out their productivity suite of apps. Tasks may not be a full-fledged app (yet), but it's a great start. You can even turn an email into a task with a simple Shift+t keyboard shortcut. Once set up, you can add tasks to your Firefox sidebar and access it from your cell phone and iGoogle. (Read more)

The article also discusses: offline access (yay! finally!!), multiple inboxes, how to make go-to labels, creating quick links, adding different superstar colors, canned responses (a new favorite of mine), custom keyboard shortcuts, forgotten attachment detector (to keep you from having to write two e-mails), and adding pictures in chat (more fun than useful). If you use Gmail, and I recommend that you do, these features will greatly improve your e-mail experience.