If you’re getting close to the end, remember to not undermine your own work.
As I get closer and closer to a final mix, I find myself often making changes that don’t necessarily improve the mix – just change it. In those cases, I regrettably sometimes don’t make sufficient notes; if I need to go back and reverse the changes, I won’t have a roadmap to do so. I’ll just have to back up and try again.
So it’s important to embrace the the Hippocratic cornerstone: “First, do no harm.” Take steps to make sure that what you do is retrievable. If I’m writing, I might export a PDF before a significant change. If I’m significantly adjusting an EQ or reverb on a mix, I will either save the settings before I change them or duplicate and disable the plugin so I can adjust one and A/B compare them. If we’re making music decisions as an ensemble, I’ll remind singers to make marks in pencil or simply say that “we’re trying this, not locking this in.”
Do whatever you can to make sure you can take artistic steps forward while retaining the ability to step back if you’ve taken a dead end.