Gmail Multiple Inboxes is how I triage incoming mail.

I have 4 panes layered vertically:

Top: Inbox 2nd pane: personal action items (i.e. must do 'today') 3rd pane: reading queue, but nothing personally actionable 4th pane: ding ding ding. Recently completed items that I still want to keep an eye on.

Each of the panes is based off of a saved search query.