If I was to make a comparison between a window box and an email inbox, the connection may not be immediately apparent, but the two items do have one thing in common: in order to get the most out of them, you must keep on top of their contents with regular attention and maintenance.

In an ill cared for window box the bulbs that blossomed into a bright coloured display become choked and the flowers disappear in a mass of weeds and grass. Think of those flowers as your urgent emails, and the weeds and grass as spam and other unimportant emails and the comparison becomes less obscure.

Maintaining a streamlined inbox keeps you bang up to speed with all that's going on in the rapidly changing world of your incoming mail. Here are some ways you can keep on top of the contents in your inbox.

Many people believe that checking their inbox is something to be done whenever the opportunity arises. They see it as a way of utilising time when there is a break in proceedings, like a driver reading a text message while parked at a red traffic light. This is quite the wrong attitude to take.

Treating your inbox in such a slipshod manner increases the likelihood of important mails going astray; becoming lost in a sea of less important mails. Set aside a regular period for uninterrupted mail checking each day and use this time to organise your inbox. Store important emails in easily retrievable folders and delete any unwanted mails. Holding on to irrelevant mail is, well, irrelevant.

You may need to keep a copy of an email for reference, but doesn't this mean hanging on to those bulky attachments that came with it? Actually, no it doesn't.

You can sift through your existing mails and remove any attachments, then save the contents of the mails for reference purposes. To do this, sort your inbox by file size, which will bring all of those jumbo attachments to the surface like swimming hippopotami. Open each mail in turn and if you decide that holding onto the attachment would be an unnecessary waste of space, right click on the attachment and then select remove. You can now save the email without its cumbersome burden.

You can draw attention to important emails by having them appear a different colour in your inbox. Such colour coding can be set up, not only to highlight important mails, but also to show whether you were the sole recipient of a mail.

To have emails from a certain sender appear in a different colour, go to your inbox and select 'Tools', then 'Organize'. This will open the 'Ways to Organize' inbox task pane. Click on the 'Using Colours' button. Either type in the address of the sender you want the colour applied to, or click on an email from that sender in your inbox, and their details will appear automatically in the 'Colour Messages' box. Select a colour for that person and click the 'Apply Colour' button.

In order to receive mails in a certain colour when you are the only recipient, which makes it essential that they do not become lost among other mails, go to the 'Messages sent only to me' now appear box and choose a colour from the drop down menu. Click the 'Turn On button' and your mails will now land in your inbox in the colour you selected if you are the only recipient.

Like many things in life, your inbox will serve you best if you maintain it regularly. These tips barely scratch the surface of the many ways you can keep on top of your incoming mail. Becoming proficient in the use of Outlook is a valuable skill to have, as the demise of the email does not look likely to happen any time soon.