To increase your productivity in Google Apps mail, be sure to enable the Auto-Advance feature in the Labs tab of Google Apps. It is listed within the Settings->Labs area:
This will enable a listing in the General Tab. From there, be sure to choose:
Reading Your Email Fast
You can focus on keeping your zeroinbox by moving through your email quickly by Starring for action, deleting or archiving. Once you take an action, the next message will appear rather than the default of going back to the inbox and selecting the next message. The subtle change will increase your processing of the inbound information coming at you.