In film-making, it’s common practice to view the raw footage shot on a particular day — known as “dailies” or “rushes” — early in the morning of the next day, before the shooting session starts. This allows the director and other members of the crew to verify the technical quality of the previous day’s shoot, as well as to examine the performances given by the actors, that the appropriate angles were shot, and so on. Then, any problems can be corrected or changes made before the production moves on to shooting new scenes.
Why not implement the same procedure with your audio recording productions? Before you begin each day’s session, take a few minutes to listen critically through the work you did the day before. You’re looking for distortion, noise, and other technical issues, as well as the quality of the performances. You’re also ensuring that the production is going in the correct direction. Maybe the path you’re heading down doesn’t seem to be a good one, now that you’ve had a night to sleep on it…
This is also a good reason not to tear everything down at the end of a session. If you leave the mics placed, the preamps and other hardware at the settings you were using, and so on, it’s a simple matter to go back and fix a problem or make changes.