Mail

When you receive mail at home just by looking at it you know if it is important.  Well not in the workplace especially if you work for  a big company.  You never know if an envelope has a simple advertisement or a contract has been anxiously expected, if you decide you are going to work for an executive you better put on your reading glasses get a cup of coffee and concentrate.
Make sure that you are very thorough, don't fall under the impression that everything is propaganda.  The rule is when you have a stack of mail on your desk set aside items marked confidential to make sure you do not open those.  Next step would be to sort three categories on the bottom you should place items that are clearly advertisement or entertainment like; magazines, newspapers and so on.  On top of this section are placed the items that are not so urgent like regular mail, announcements that hold dates a month or more away.  On the very top you would place items that are urgent and need immediate attention.  Below urgent matters you need to place those items you set aside marked personal unless they are marked personal and urgent.
Here is the tricky part though.  Most mail does not have the works urgent  and sometimes they don't even say personal on the outside.  Your boss has developed a trust in you enough to allow you to handle his mail.  don't disappoint him/her,  Read the mail thoroughly and it comes in handy assure  that you have a pen and sticky notes at hand when you begin opening mail, even paperclips just in case.  Sometimes the mail has extra papers which are mentioned in the front either by the full word enclosures or by the initials Enc.  Your job is to make sure that all mentioned documents are in the envelope if not make sure you add a sticky note bringing this to your boss' attention, in doing this you also cover your back, this tells the boss that it was the sender who forgot to add the enclosure and not you who lost the extra documents.  It also helps if you get to the mail at the time of day when you know there will be less interruptions.