GMail has this cute little feature which allows you to mark an email with a star. The nice thing about it is that there is no meaning for that star which is defined by the interface. It's just like the old archive bit on files in MS-DOS (this was supposed to be used to denote that a given file has been backed up by some program, but in my experience was used as a temporary flag built in to each file to help when writing .bat files), so you can just use the star how ever you want. Does the star refer to things that need to be addressed (like a ToDo for your email), archived messages that you want to have quick access to, a collection of crazy emails from current and ex-girlfriends? Doesn't matter, you do with it whatever you want.

My answer to the use of the star is as follows: For any important email that requires follow up, but not immediate attention, I will click this star, and move onto the next email. In theory, this insures that when I get home from work (or finish watching The Office, or whatever) and next check my email, I will see this star and take whatever action is required. In actual practice, what clicking the star icon does is sink that particular email to a memory hole. The next interaction I will have with that message is that, a few weeks later when I remember to check my starred messages, it generates a huge amount of guilt that I haven't followed up with that topic, or added that person to my Facebook, or whatever. I then proceed to delete the message, no action having been taken.

Although I guess it does serve it's purpose. If the message were actually important, I would have taken action immediately. Since it was sunk for at least a few days and there were no negative repercussions, it clearly wasn't particularly important in the first place, and my initial assessment that this was something which required action was incorrect.