As well as organising my tracks, I like to go through a process I call "housekeeping", because it's not all that rewarding butt the place looks a lot tidier when I've finished. How much housekeeping I need to do depends on how much care went into the project at the track-laying stage, but I'll be listening out for things that don't belong in the finished mix.
The list of possible unwanted sounds can be endless. but includes: the drummer's count in; the bass player swearing at the end, because he didn't think it was a good take; the singer clearing his/her throat; a shed load of extraneous noise from one of the guitar tracks, just before the searing lead solo; three backing singers talking about their night out until they're about half-a-bar from where they come in (that's a real one); a stange clicking noise as the singer opens their mouth; habitual tapping of the strings on the bass where the rests should be… Whatever, it really helps to get rid of anything that shouldn't be there. That's a theme I'll be going back to when we get to EQ.
I also keep eyes and ears open for tracks that have been under-recorded level-wise. When you use Normalise, or just put a gain plug-in at the head of the channel, it always pays to keep the fader levels somewhere either side of "unity gain" (ie, neither cutting or boosting, but at the zero mark) in case you either run out of fader travel, or perhaps run so little level you're in danger of working at 12-bit resolution.
The next bit is slightly more controversial, because it concerns tuning and timing. How much time and effort you are prepared to fixing these issues depends on i) how tight the performers were, ii) the style of music, iii) how much time you've actually got and iv) your skill at making these tiny tweaks. There's also the question of the client's expectations!
